Interior turret should be higher on the list, it’s very good at the exact thing it’s designed for: killing players inside your ship with minimal collateral damage to the vessel.
Personally, I think there should be a static pistol / AR weapon people can make custom turrets with using the new AI blocks which wouldn’t damage your own structures compared to the assault rifle. Not to mention pretty sure you can make more pistol bullets per batch than the AR.
You clearly haven't seen the interior ball turret. Same space, auto reloads and is four miniguns strapped to a rotor and a hinge. Plus it's way better armored
Something people seen to overlook when judging the new weapons is that the artillery and assault cannon turret has wayy more health than the original turrets. I mean building a gatling costs like 40 plates or something and an assault cannon something around 200. This means that even if it outputs less damage, its lifespan is probably gonna be longer in a fight, witch would result in more damage overall
@@Zer0sLegion “Space engineer used to have only four different types of weapons” *me who’s seen gameplay when ramming was the only option and engines could be put behind covered panels* “am I a joke to you?”
@@noneofyourbusiness4133 heavy armor missile spear raming things is pretty effect if it's used properly and dose not miss the target you can use the turret block gyros and roter with rc blocks and cameras to make rc missiles gravity propelled heavy armor is all so pretty good.
You could use the war head for extreme ranges trumping 2000 meters as they can be built into their own ships making it a great weapon for sneak attacks but other than that they do almost become useless
I feel like warheads weren’t made so that you could make custom missiles or bombs but rather that they were made so that you could plant them onto enemy bases sort of like C4.
That's _if_ the interior turrets don't kill you first. Or the enemy themselves. I could see someone doing something master chief like from halo 2 though
I think that's certainly the implied idea with a control panel on the block, while the small grid warheads seem to be intended to be used as a weapon instead
Have you looked into piston guns? A pistongun transforms every object into a projectile with a velocity of up to 1000m/s. That works with warheads as well. Missed your target? Slap a sensor on that detects enemy grids for non direct hits even in space. Greetings Kendoka2
Looking at railguns, an idea (that might be impossible) to simulate their effects and also make them more worthwhile: Every time they hit a block they also send out a cone of damage in the direction of travel based on their residual energy and the mass of the struck block.
I kinda of agree, widening the cone of damaged after initial impact could really step them up to be one of the best weapons you could use on a fighter type ship, although I'd personally always recommend still have either auto or assault cannons to back it up
@@Zer0sLegion They could be used as spinal weapons for motherships as they can create holes for infiltrators and drones to work their way through the inside, or a window to a subsystem. Not very useful on their own, but they can be strategically abused
For single player the small grid fixed assault cannon is panacea for taking over SPRT station and ships as you can hang outside turret range and pick off all of it's turrets and antenna with precision. The 2km range of it outclasses anything the space pirates currently have and the ammo is dirt cheap.
assuming the SPRT ship would even fire at you to begin with. Some, like the RUST, are broken and WILL NOT FIRE BACK, not even the interior turrets. Meaning all ya gotta do is snip the antennas.
@@ceilyurie856 It's because Keen never updated the magazine inventory for the new turrets. They're still putting the 5.56NATO magazines in the turrets which are so outdated you can't even build/deconstruct them in an assembler.
The ultimate weapon in the game are custom kinetic missiles, preferrably with script control. This thing, loaded with hangar door blocks or container with stacks of stone can bork the game and punch moon-sized holes in any kind of armor. Cant be effectively intercepted, since there are no explosives as main source of damage. If this kind of missile uses glitch drive, it also even doesnt give any time for turrets to take it out.
The railgun would be better as a combat opening weapon over a continuous combat weapon. 1 or 2 railguns on the front of your main battle ship would be good to surprise the enemy with a strong shot. on top of this, the railgun's impulse is strong enough to turn a ship, so you could use it more strategically to get the enemy ship to face in a certain way where it's more vulnerable. Another good use is to strike weak spots. With the addition of turret controllers, we gained the ability to tell turrets what to aim at. Putting a railgun turret down with instructions to attack only power generators would be a very good strategic option for a few railgun turrets on a high armoured creation. This would allow for the periodic destruction of reactors during combat, due to the overall damage per shot of the railgun, over the other weapons, which could be used to target armament of the enemy ship, engines, control systems, fighters, the latter. This makes the railgun the best for a support ship's armaments, or as a support armament for a combat oriented ship. tl;dr: So, as a main weapon, the railgun does suck. But as a support weapon, used to assist in combat by targeting essential systems, it surpasses all the other weapons by a long way.
The railgun has a really nice use, you can get rid of all the turrets and go in and take the ship. It's actually rather good at acquiring ships without taking out too much of the internals.
The first thing I ever built was a fighter I named the “beautiful boy”. It had 20 railguns. When I shot it, it sent me backwards and took away all my power. I still have that design saved and enjoy terrorizing my friend with it sometimes.
The thing about the railgun is that its one line. You don't have to hit the same place multiple times to reach a component, its one shot and it goes through most ships
Playermade weapons are also something of note. Piston guns have come very far as far as size and speed, and mobious industries weapons (most notably swarm missiles) are all terrifying and a garunteed kill basically. The inenginuity of the community knows no bounds.
@@mistermidnight1823 already have a few ships in construction for that. They have multi purpose tubes, so you can build your own projectiles/missile. The only difficulty is adding the small grid together in a legit manner (docking not supergridding) while trying to stay compact.
If you count clang guns you'd have to downgrade literally every other weapon to D tier. I've personally seen piston guns that shot things at twice the max speed and split 10k block ships in two with one shot.
As for the warhead, I will have to disagree with the D ranking. Sure, it has the flaws of it CAN be shot down and you have to build your own delivery system, but a good delivery system can be 98% printed, has ways to avoid being targeted effectively, and can cause massive damage. And I rarely take "cost" into consideration, because after 3 or so hours, enough resource locations have been mapped/mined that cost is rarely an issue. I would at least give the warhead a C.
For the missile launcher, use timer blocks to Salvo. Basically you'll have a missile machine gun. Set 9 timer blocks attached to 9 rockets all set to start at 1 second. They will fire 9 rockets separately in the course of 1 second. All my vehicles have this for their rocket Turrets and it decimates all grids.
I think it would be worthwhile to consider pure kinetic weapons. Building a missile with a warhead is expensive, placing a drill on a hydrogen tank and a thruster is braindead easy and cheap. The damage output is massive as well, because collisions are just that destructive. Speaking of warheads, you're also forgetting that decoys exist. They're stupid cheap (decoy + battery + merge block is all you need) and they're very helpful in getting your missiles to the target without them getting shot down. Custom missiles also have unlimited range, and with clever use of scripts and camera raycasting you can aim them from thousands of meters away. I think warheads deserve to be higher up, maybe C or B tier; besides, you don't have to put warheads on missiles, you can just board a ship, build a warhead in it, start its timer and run.
Yes and artillery at least A since it is very powerful and move up even assault cuz man one hit can be kill and that applies even to railgun judging weapon by how faster it fires isn't really the thing to aim for
@@yamatokurusaki5790 it was already discussed: even railgun rounds can ricochet, finding the weakspot on an enemy ship is difficult at best, and different ship internal designs can remove the central weakspot altogether.
@@yamatokurusaki5790 you can scatter 27 small containers over the entire ship instead of having a central large container. This means losing a container doesn't also mean that your ENTIRE ammo load gets turned right back at you. Same with hydrogen tanks and power production.
I'd use railguns on fighter bombers, since a fighter is likely to get closer to the enemy than a large ship will, and you can flick your wrist while flying it. It'd be used to specifically target enemy guns and engines.
Another nail in the Railgun’s coffin is that after you charged it you still have to aim it, spin it up and fire. Realistically the large grid is firing more like every 70-80 secs.
i actually think the warhead is a verry effective weapon if used the right way! the one i got for mine: is a huge gravity accellerator launcher and space balls+warhead+merge block as 1 projectile (why no armor piece in front ? faster reloading ... like 2 a sec almost) 4 welders per projectile block and voala you gotten yourself a super rapid firing weapon that absolutely can overwhelm enemy defences with pure firerate projectile spamming, and the damage output once they hit ... gargantuan
What I find really funny is that the areas these weapons are the most effective is basically exactly opposite to what you'd expect. Normally you'd think that small caliber weapons are best suited for anti-air purposes, while the heavier weapons are really good against capital ships. However the reality is that gatling guns are really well suited for stripping a heavy enemy ship of weapons, while assault and artillery canons are really good for taking out fighters because of their higher bullet velocity and the fact that it usually only takes a single lucky hit to completely cripple whatever small ship they hit.
the warhead is in an interesting position where it's only as effective as you can make it but it's only limited by what you can create. it's hard to use but it can form the core of devastating large-scale weapons, whereas all the other weapon types are limited by their immutability.
@@deathstreak1156 One can easily drop dozens of warhead bombs on a base. Or lay a minefield with them. But thats the thing, it requires bigger thinking on deployment.
As soon as I saw it I immediately knew it for what it was: the SE version of plastic explosives. You take a group of dudes, infiltrate a base via the basement, plant that thing on something that goes boom, and it’s infinitely worth it, because the cost of building one single warhead is well outweighed by the cost of a base. And, using the rail gun, you could make a hole in an enemy ship/station for the infiltration team to go through to plant it.
@@niklai1178 Even better. Make a drop pod with a battering ram to exploit the breach. The drop pod is going to cleave through the breached armor and reach inside the ship.
One thing to consider for the penetrative weapons though- if you hit a hydrogen tank or cargo container with explosive items in it, it can potentially score a critical hit that decimates the target. Even though it doesn't deal nearly as much damage over time, that penetrative power can potentially be enough to one-shot an enemy ship. That gives the railgun, artillery cannon, and assault cannon a solid leg-up against the gatling and assault cannon, especially on large grid ships. One thing I've also noticed is that while rockets do suck, they are REALLY good at downing smaller grids due to their explosive AOE damage being able to shred even heavy small-grid armor. I think that their munitions move way too slow to be practical atm, and their range is just pathetic (and I hope that keen fixes both of these issues), but even with those drawbacks they're still pretty solid at quickly disabling an incoming small grid fighter. (Though I do agree that all-in-all they are the worst weapon)
Yeah, that's fine but you still have to hit. The slow fire rate is a bigger factor imo as you shoot less often making hitting more important. And for rockets, the AOE is very handy, I just wish the weapon itself was more reliable. And, whilst not mentioned in the video, they also have the slowest projectiles as well, making the even more difficult to aim.
@@Zer0sLegion it’s in that case that you gotta have the mix. You use the faster firing weapons to keep the pressure on the enemy and dealing damage to the hull and weapon systems while the massive penetrating weapons take out the more integral systems and fuel.
@@Zer0sLegion you've got it backwards on slow firing weapons. Missing 60% of shots on a slow weapons is the same damage loss as missing 60% if shots on a fast weapon. The difference is with the slower fire weapon you're able to spend all your time between shots focusing purely on evading your opponent. Gatlings or autos you have to focus both on evading and keeping your nose on target at the same time.
The only thing I'll say for the Missile launchers is that if your enemy's galling guns are shooting down missiles, they aren't shooting you. Though the expense over-offsets that I suppose
for general purpose fighting, definitely. but you can use them to give cover for things like deploying dropships or screening a warhead-laden torpedo salvo
Obviously, the best weapon is using all weapons on a ship to cover any scenario you come across as they have their own strengths and weaknesses when fighting ships. I would rank the railgun higher. The one thing you forgot to mention is velocity. When shooting at ships farther away, the higher muzzle velocity means you have to lead the target less and there will be a lot less drop from gravity (main issue with artillery at a distance).
So rail gun is even worse than that for two reasons: 1) the rail gun is a high penetrator but over penetrates. Meaning your damage is a thin line that cuts through and easily misses. 2) they have enormous energy cost meaning small ships can actually disable themselves which leaves you vulnerable
I think the whole purpose of stuff like the rail gun is that they want them to be used in combinations. Railgun being used as a kind of "hit them upfront and gut them stem to stern" sort of deal while other weapons are meant to deal wide range of damage. warheads need a bit of an upgrade but would be good as mines.
Late to this but one of the multi-uses for the interior turret's turning and shooting speed is that it is quite effective for warhead and meteor screening.
Warheads are amazing if you have a good method of getting them on target like missiles and clang cannons, easily the best weapon in the game to the point of being overpowered. Small warheads not so much, but large warheads can split a battleship in half in one shot. Other details you missed is the velocity of the railgun, its fast, its important. Also turrets vs custom turrets, the normal turrets for assault cannons and artillery have ludicrous amounts of health, thats an important factor in fights.
Huh, surprised that the original weapon, that's been in since the start, hasn't been included: Ramming Ah good fun in the very early stages of game development when there were no weapons, building specialist blade ramming ships to cut other ships in half Also, what about the second weapon in the game: Gravity propelled rock cannons
im gonna ask you the question cause you seemed to have played the game, i always wonder when i watch youtube video about it...why arent they doing some sort of pod that they launch at ennemie whit a shit load of gatling on it....if the main ship is far away from the actual battle and that the ennemie is occupied whith shoting down the pod that are blocking his ways and shoting him, it meaning that the main ship could have artilery or laser canon to support from afar...but i dont know i never played the game maybe this strat sucks
@@guillaumerattaire290 someone did exactly what you said but like 10 times deadlier imagine that pod had ai and a drill on it and when it touches i ship it drills to its reactor and drops small turret drones in random areas inside the ship (it was a very old video and i dont remember what it was even called. the guy made several versions of it too i think he even made a hacking variant of it)
I use warheads as a bunker buster kind of thing. It's best used in creative but essentially a ship welds a merge block connected to a warhead with a sensor and when it falls it blows upm not the most practical and resource efficient but it's fun
I'd put missiles a little higher on the list, the splash damage is still useful. Also, a salvo of missiles can be a good decoy to keep enemy gattlings busy shooting at something else instead of your ship. Also, you have to take into consideration the fact that we have a hand held variant, which is just cool. Overall I'd say it's somewhere between b and c, it has it's uses but is expensive to make ammo, and it's more of a support weapon than a primary one.
You missed the part where artillery guns have steep firing arc. This may make them a bit more difficult to use but it is the only weapon that allows you to engage targets over a berm or ridge or when attacking from a hidden depression. Of course you have to be on a planet for this to work but it works beautifully. If you can range like in World of Warships then this is your weapon of choice. So now I like building self propelled howitzers. I will start off with a large grid gun assembly and then have it mated on top of a small grid chassis. This gives you a lower profile while maintaining that large grid splash damage. The Assault gun is not bad for arcing fire but it's more flat trajectory.
It’s great that the video factors in the cost of the ammo types, as many other videos of it’s like don’t consider such things, but I think the cost of the turrets themselves and the real-estate they take up should also be considered as well. DPS is a great starting point for determining how effective a weapon is for a space engineers, as combat tends to be long and drawn out. However, it doesn’t tell the whole story. The rail gun for example has great alpha strike potential, and therefore must have a poor DPS to maintain game balance. They still suck compared to how much Real-estate and energy they need tho!
It really comes down to tactics, strategy, and logistics. You want plentiful and easy access to (logistics), the right weapon (tactics), for the mission at hand (strategy).
the only time i found a good use for warheads was when I was playing a PvP multiplayer campaign thing where I literally tunneled under an enemy base, planted bombs and got out. originally I was planning on planting a bomb on the structural pieces of the base which was connected to the ground since it was from what I could tell at a distance it was on struts, I ended up finding their under ground storage and was able to blow that to high hell knocking the base into a non static structure
I think a lot of the lower tier weapons can easily be fixed by lowering the base cost of ammunition and making more expensive ammo alternatives that pack a much larger punch (uranium tipped rounds, warheads with larger payloads, dirty bombs...)
I think a way to make the missiles worth it would be to crank the damage up. Have it deal something like 5000 damage at ground zero, with diminishing damage the farther the target is from impact. That would make them terrifying to go against as they would just punch craters in you ship if you don't waste ammo shooting them down
Despite its drawbacks I feel that the rail gun probably benefits the most from building multiple especially in a broadside type of configuration. Yes they cost a lot but building multiple can decrease the cooldown time by staggering the shots or it can be used as a quick massive burst of damage to try to increase your chances of hitting critical systems.
warheads are excellent for planetary mining. Place it around 25-30 meters from the ore being indicated and it blows a great big open hole to it so you can reach it easily.
I use the Warhead as a finisher weapon on the server I'm on. We have a more atmosphere fights so if you can take out their engines a single warhead will destroy them. Granted we also have modded thrusters that are cheap and are for stabilization and slight coarse adjustments so we strap those on it to make it more likely to hit.
For the railgun, irl a big problem we have is heat, whenever a gauss rifle or railgun shoots it heats up a lot. So to combat that and improve the fire rate i would be interesting to install radiators and attach them to the railgun.
I only use missiles as a "door knocker" breaching weapon for smaller ships. The idea is to quickly knock out something like a window or door so you can get inside a ship more easily/quickly. But I wouldn't use them them for pretty much anything else.
As for large railgun, my way to increase their effectiveness is to add a rotor with a singe stack of blocks out like a fan blade and a circle of sensors each controlling fire now on each railgun to create a burst fire and give me a better shot spread in a critical area.
Another reason railguns are hard to use is the firing delay, when you pull the trigger there's a slight delay before it actually fires. This isn't so bad if your firing it at a massive ship or station, but any other target is probably not going to be in the same place by the time you fire unless your compensating for movement.
Honestly, the artillery cannon would be perfect for a Swordfish II build due to it's profile, not to mention it's slow fire rate and damage output too.
“Space engineer used to have only four different types of weapons” *me who’s seen gameplay when ramming was the only option and engines could be put behind covered panels* “am I a joke to you?”
How I might improve Missiles and Warheads is make the missiles homing, so they're less likely to miss, and maybe add more variants to the Warheads and maybe rename it to something like Mines ore Explosives
Please cover the copy target function, it allows for the ai to shoot at the weapons max distance. I love using it with custom turrets. And for custom turret missiles. (For that matter I noticed the small custom turret controller has a shorter ai max auto fire distance, compared to the large block version)
Because of the fact that missiles can be shot down they actually make a fairly good decoy rather then a straight up weapon. If the enemy turrets are firing at the swarm of missiles coming towards them then they aren't shooting at you and if they do not have missile turrets themselves then all of your turrets are going to do damage to their ship which will end with you having a massive DPS advantage over the enemy ship plus the missiles themselves will do damage if they don't end up getting shot down which will boost the DPS advantage over your opponent even more.
I wonder how effective it would be to make a sort of railgun bomber swarm, with lighter fighters deploying decoys as a screen. Put one or two railguns on each bomber, then fly them in close enough under the screen to make accurate shots at weapons engines the bridge or other vulnerable areas. Since the recharge time is 15 seconds you may be able to rotate them out, fly a few in to shoot then they turn around to recharge while the next few follow up behind.
I combine all of these weapons (besides warhead ) into ships I make (Gatling gun for AA and stuff) interior for bridge defence missiles for ground strikes, auto cannons as main turrets on smaller ships, the attack turret thing for bigger ships with primary, artillery for long range strikes on ground and destroying enemy ships bridges, railgun for wreaking havoc on enemy ships and bases if I want a quick run.😅
I use interior turrets on the exterior of my ships for missile defense. It frees up the main turrets to focus on the enemy ship, and because they have such a small foot print and don't need a conveyor I can slap them anywhere.
It's taken some effort to get used to the massive bullet drop the game has now. Also, I used to have fun downing Air Traffic ships with a fighter but the other day I hammered on a hunchback until I ran out of ammo (hard-mounted assaults and autos). Getting hits on the lift thrusters was almost impossible. I don't want to stick turrets on my fighter but I might have to go the auto-aim route.
i agree with everything except 2 things: 1 warhead is B tier, super useful for sabotaging enemy ships, and does the most damage in the game, so if you build a missle swarm you can one shot every ship 2 railgun is A tier, high accuracy shots mean you can destroy enemy turrets of a base before you are even in range. Also if you hit a long ship from the front you are gonna tear it in half
@@Zer0sLegion It is, but you use it just as the "opener shot" in a battle to destroy the interior modules, and then you go with Assault cannons and turrets
@@wildocado5376 A weapon that you can only use once or twice per fight must be able to end that fight consistently or at least cripple the enemy ship. The railgun does neither making it an ineffective weapon when compared with the other options that you could have built using the material. If you use it to chip away at an enemies defenses from a distance then they will likely launch a fighter or other ship to attack, and having a massive liability on your ship will make it certain that the fight will be more costly that if you had just used another weapon. And even if the enemy base does not have any fighters or is undefended, you have just built a weapon that is only usable in an incredibly rare situation and is ineffective in combat, this could have been better used to just make another ship that could fight other ships and bases, rather than be exclusive to attacking the few undefended bases you could come across.
@Nic You can use railgun against AFK bases, and warhead for tunneling. But warheads are just fun to play with, not necessarily effective, it's cool to build missiles
The warhead is great if you know how to use it. I make rail guns with grav generators. The ammo is a large grid strip tipped with heavy armor, then a sensor, then a warhead or two and artificial mass. The sensor sets off the warhead a second after detecting the target ship, which is usually just after the ammo penetrates the target ship. It blows up inside the ship.
Rail Gun as the payload of a built self-guiding missile. Operations Spear Fish, the missile does not strike the target, the rail gun does and therefore it is a different tactical problem to a normal missile
I now have an idea to arrange 4 small railguns in a revolver-like pattern, turning to the next after each one fires, to have a pretty decent shot every 3.75 seconds. I will definitely test that idea some day when ill have enough game knowledge to set up and utilize such a contraption
No, custom turrets are incredibly fragile and not PCU efficient once you factor in the numerous other components to make it work. You'd be better off with a well armored fixed subgrid of longer range weapons or the standard turrets.
@@SpacemanSpraggz after like 15 test designs I actually managed to create a custom turret that did not instantly get severed from my craft after getting shot and I have to say, once you have a functional one, they are absolutely devastating
I’ve always found railguns to be the most useful when you have a friend that distracting the enemy and you can blast them from far away, or just use it to snipe important engines on enemy ships
I'm surprised gatling still does any damage to heavy armor at all still, and i think railguns are decentish for alpha damage and creating holes for other munitions to follow after. Since there is no fixed arty or auto then it's between rails and missile launchers and i'd pick rails.
So, Halo boy here, and I have some experience in rail guns. The railgun is NOT a midships gun. It is NOT a broadside gun. The railgun is the most effective when you are aiming down the length of the ship. You want a center mass hit that punches through the nose or the tail. It's also the sort of gun best situated for building a ship around, like the A10 warthog is built around its main cannon. It should be a forward weapon mostly concealed inside the ship's hull. And warheads, you're looking at the active use and missing the passive. Warheads are excellent mines. Put a little series of fabiricators on the rear, display a hologram, and craft up a deadly defensive shield.
Notable advantage of the railgun: It's Sabots are way smaller the shells used by an assault cannon, making them a great option if ammo capacity on a small grid is an issue.
I have never played or even heard of this game before this video so take this with a couple dozen grains of salt, but some balancing ideas for: The warhead - Make the payload variable, with a higher damaging payloads costing more material (probably uranium at the very least). Significantly lower the price of the current damage level. Then you have the option to make a really powerful but high value one shot weapon, which probably wouldn't be great due to inconsistency but hopefully it'd be fun. The Railgun - Significantly increase it's damage to all armour and maybe introduce some kind of energy shield block(If similar to heavy armour), which would be relatively expensive to maintain electricity-wise and can reflect (Completely nullifying) the railgun's shots. Also seemingly in the game, I'd have reflected railgun shots impart significant force onto the ship, so it could be used as a stun/combo tool to throw off opponents even if it doesn't directly damage Missiles - Generally faster speed (Especially in space), health and damage, maybe also change it's firing patterns to be a more obvious burst damage weapon to be used in conjunction with other consistent forms of sustained DPS? Idk enough about the way this game is played to provide more. I'd love to hear thoughts from those with literally any experience playing this game, I imagine these changes would need a lot of work to suit the pacing of the game's combat
the war head is the most fun in my opinion its an easy way to self destruct your ship or base to prevent enemy players from taking it and it can be used as a era system if done right i designed a ship that ejects sections of its armor if they become too beat up thus making the ship lighter and leaving the equivalent of the alley way garbage can and if you do it right you can get a whole mini ship installed and literally launch it towards your enemy as a weapon in and of itself or just that really aggressive ship defense lol
I like adding a raulgun custom turret controller with a few barrels on any large base or a couple static ones on heavy fighters. Basically you're sacrificing one turret point for a dice roll to cripple an enemy ship or base. Sure, the most likely thing to happen is just a miss or at best some big armor damage, but there's also a chance that you basically instantly win.
There's a mod I Always use called "Vanilla homing missiles" which bumps missiles up to C or even B tear in my book. It makes fighter crafts a lot more effective
I love the idea of he updates and the fact that it gives you a chance to build your own turrets like you can do with your ship. One question does come into mind and that’s is if the turrets builds can fire on their own like normal turrets because in battle you don’t really have time to manually operate every turret or have enough players to do it. But one thing for sure is that you can make a turret that’s special in one type of weapon or combination of them. This can make more ways of making defenses as well and could be interesting if someone does create an indoor turret, but can be overkill and might mess up the base or ship than the players it shooting at.
One thing I might do when I get the game is probably make a ship with custom turrets that can boom-bard enemy base’s. But one thing that I can think for a good use of rail guns is for anti orbital ship cannons because it can hit fast and far keeping ships on edge in space if there in range. But this is just an idea and has not yet been tested so far from what I have seen because people practically never use them in battles often, but if it can then that is one best use I can think of for a practical defense turret.
The ones i use the most are the gatling, assault cannon, small grid railgun and large warheads. The gatlings for defense and offense, assault and railgun for sniping, and warheads for cavedigging. Missiles i found best for recycling.
Glad this video came up in my recommendeds thanks for explaining the new update weapon and also for introducing me to the Custom Turrets, I like making motherships and my current one just wasn't having the right feeling with the defense grid and main weapons, will likely be switching out my forward turret deck with custom cycle firing Artillary
What I do for the warheads is just shove a load of explosive components in a grinded down cargo container (medium - large container) and I have a warhead behind that container, and the large blast radius of the explosive components damages large ships really well and gives small grids or light armour builds a hard time surviving or existing after a blast
A guy in my old faction made a giant octopus with 4 rail guns on turrets on each arm and hidden thrusters inside. And the arms were covered with normal turrets. Thing was insane!
How about projectile speed? To be honest I don’t have pvp experience but high projectile speed (like railgun) in conjunction with highest range gives more strong point that haven’t been mentioned in a video. 100m/s Moving target at 2km range can be hit by railgun and give possibility to make a first shot on enemy and with higher speed of projectile you need less lead to aim
I took it into consideration when making the rankings but for the most part, it's not that different between weapon. Missiles fire the slowest and Gatling's are the fastest as far as I'm aware, although the railgun is pretty fast.
Something to also note: Assault cannons will bounce off of large grid light and heavy armor at a certain angle or more. I have yet to figure out what that angle is but it seems to be like 45*
I recently made a script that lets you control an entire array of guns (like artillery, assault cannon, railgun, etc.) and shoot them in sequence so that they don't all fire at once. The script also displays the optimal firerate for how many of those guns you have so you can have a steady stream of shots. It's pretty fun when you can full auto fire railgun shots with like 120 railguns shooting back to back
On a small fighter i built a railgun to snipe turrets on npc ships for hijacking purposes, or at encounters. About half way through my first encounter/test i ground down the railgun and put in an artillery cannon instead. The railgun was too expensive and slow to be worth it as a sniper. Furthermore it kept destroying the turrets in a way the ammo got destroyed too, so no ammo loot. While the arty allowed for sniping and did enough damage to disable turrets without fully destroying the blocks from a single hit. Preserving the ammo inside for looting.
A custom turret of 4 Railguns is damn near stupidly excessive. Like that's 50k focused on a pretty precise area. I mean if it hits something square on, its getting obliterated, but how is anybody gonna justify needing that much high precision fire power for 1 shot every minute.
What makes rockets even worse is their excessive PCU compared to the other weapons, since it has to calculate splash damage. All the artillery and rail guns just delete blocks in the projectile’s way.
Wait, I just remembered that the missile turret is 275 PCU, whereas the static racket launcher is 825 PCU. So maybe the splash calculation isn’t the main reason the static one is so high, still have to wonder why it is.
I think it would be kind of cool if railguns and artillery had different ammo types. In terms of railguns, it's a railguns, as long as it's magnetic in some way it will come flying down the barrel. Armour piercing rounds, explosive rounds, ion rounds (knocks out power on a given radius on a ship or something like that). Maybe even beehive or some shotgun-like round that can just blanket a target in low damage projectiles. Same with artillery, AP and HE, maybe a combination of the two with slightly less damage, ion could be a railguns only round, beehive could go on artillery too, but this would be like the original beehive. Anti fighter role.
Missiles are good at close range battles with dreadnouts. Ship props: 1 missle launcher, heavy armor, turret AI decoys, lots of engines and gyroscopses. Fly close to ship, lock target on turret and shoot. With this build each dreadnout quicly becomes weaponless... No weapons - no damage - dreadnout can be hijacked... But it's still better to use smal AI controlled warhead drones...
on PvP servers i use the Railgun as a Breaching gun to basically Guarantee a way inside either a base or a ship when whatever crew i join end up raiding bases. and since it has such a long range we can fire at ships and bases without needing to sacrifice any armor or anything else to get it done, as we need that to bait shots from turrets when we do end up breaching and entering.
I made a broadside ship utilizing the railguns, it has (if I remember correctly) 12 railguns on each side with the option to do a staggering fire (give a shot every 5 seconds, thus a dps of 10000) or full broadside bringing 12 railguns onto one target at once. But yeah I agree railguns are quite bad especially since things like piston jolt guns can be made which allows for special ammo types, quick fire rate, and projectiles that don't have set ranges [modified one to send a projectile at 700 m/s]
I find it hard to accurately class weapons for Space Engineers as they each fill a specific niche. To think of each being used as the sole weapon on a ship ignores the fact that they are not meant to be used that way. Railguns and Artillery take a long time to rechamber, but lighter weapons can cover while they reload. Light weapons are consistent, but struggle to punch through thick armor like heavies.
Yes, they struggle per shot to break through armour, but every weapon in the game has higher dps than the railgun so in the same amount of time they do more damage.
Imagine a turret that doesnt fire at where you ARE, but where you are GOING TO BE. Its basically the first shown turret, but when it detects a player, it uses their velocity on all 3 axis (x, y, z) to predict where they are going to be, and thus, where to shoot. You can however confuse them with eratic and wild movements. How do yall like my idea?
i feel the Warhead should be higher because yes it can be shot down and is expensive but you can make autoseeking land mines with the new Warfare Custome Turret update... just imagine it things that lay in wait on a Multiplayer server for the enemy faction to come up where BAM they spring into action and launch themselves at the enemy then BOOM and there ship is damaged if not destroyed!
The whole point of real railguns is that they shoot through EVERYTHING. They're made more to precisely take out individual heavily armoured components rather than cause damage to the target as a whole. The SE ones are pretty underpowered, but that's probably to conserve the balance.
Auto cannon and assault cannon turrets belong in s class. My reason is I've built small grid ships with high acceleration and I turn off my gyros when fighting certain targets. My favorite combo is two auto turrets and 1 assault I set everything to target weapons systems and travel slightly slower than the ship pursuing me and take control of the assault cannon and start sniping around 1 km out and it hasn't failed me yet
Warheads deserve C tier or better, because they are a tool for bombardment. It is impractically expensive to tackle bases which are buried underground without warheads, meaning a ship that drops cheap/simple unguided anti-voxel bombs is pretty much a necessity unless you want to barge in the front door (which they may not even have one of a suitable size for your attack vehicles, leading to a scenario of ineffective infantry combat where they have the defensive turret advantage). Granted it's just one use, but that one use is a job NOTHING ELSE in the game does cheaper. The only other option to do the job is dropping long pillars of heavy armor or blast doors at the speed cap to make a deep hole, or making some kind of combat drilling ship (which is insane).
Can't argue with numbers but the design and feel is important to me as well. It's just cool to fire an assault cannon or build a gunship with a coaxial railgun.
Warheads are VERY versatile. They really don't belong on this list because they aren't a projectile firing weapon, When they are paired with a well designed weapon system that a skilled engineer can create and implement then they can be very effective and you might not have to get into a fight before it's over with them even in survival. With the new update they are even more deadly and I'm excited to be working on the most destructive devices with them.
The usefulness of warheads completely changes when scripts are enabled. Scripted guided missiles with automatic evasion. Speedlimit-breaking clang guns with APHE shells. Kamikaze drones that ram the target after taking too much damage.
Interior turret should be higher on the list, it’s very good at the exact thing it’s designed for: killing players inside your ship with minimal collateral damage to the vessel.
I usually use interior turrets to protect blindspots from hydromen
I like using them for CIWS. They can hit rockets and meteors pretty well.
Personally, I think there should be a static pistol / AR weapon people can make custom turrets with using the new AI blocks which wouldn’t damage your own structures compared to the assault rifle. Not to mention pretty sure you can make more pistol bullets per batch than the AR.
You clearly haven't seen the interior ball turret. Same space, auto reloads and is four miniguns strapped to a rotor and a hinge. Plus it's way better armored
@@Johnny_200 cwis but to the power of four lol
Something people seen to overlook when judging the new weapons is that the artillery and assault cannon turret has wayy more health than the original turrets. I mean building a gatling costs like 40 plates or something and an assault cannon something around 200. This means that even if it outputs less damage, its lifespan is probably gonna be longer in a fight, witch would result in more damage overall
I was looking at that the other day, the arty turret has higher health than the railgun!
@@Zer0sLegion “Space engineer used to have only four different types of weapons”
*me who’s seen gameplay when ramming was the only option and engines could be put behind covered panels* “am I a joke to you?”
@@noneofyourbusiness4133 heavy armor missile spear raming things is pretty effect if it's used properly and dose not miss the target you can use the turret block gyros and roter with rc blocks and cameras to make rc missiles gravity propelled heavy armor is all so pretty good.
You could use the war head for extreme ranges trumping 2000 meters as they can be built into their own ships making it a great weapon for sneak attacks but other than that they do almost become useless
@@noneofyourbusiness4133 you still can put engines behind panels, just make sure you have 6 blocks of gaps
I feel like warheads weren’t made so that you could make custom missiles or bombs but rather that they were made so that you could plant them onto enemy bases sort of like C4.
That's _if_ the interior turrets don't kill you first. Or the enemy themselves.
I could see someone doing something master chief like from halo 2 though
I think that's certainly the implied idea with a control panel on the block, while the small grid warheads seem to be intended to be used as a weapon instead
Idk I always wanted to use them as cheap bombs to drop or throw at enemy’s
They're also very good to hide in a ship, let your friend fly test it, and then remotely blow them up midair
Have you looked into piston guns? A pistongun transforms every object into a projectile with a velocity of up to 1000m/s. That works with warheads as well. Missed your target? Slap a sensor on that detects enemy grids for non direct hits even in space.
Greetings Kendoka2
Looking at railguns, an idea (that might be impossible) to simulate their effects and also make them more worthwhile: Every time they hit a block they also send out a cone of damage in the direction of travel based on their residual energy and the mass of the struck block.
I think what the railguns do is fine, they serve their purpose to the T and aren't too overpowered, I just don't think there purpose is very good.
I kinda of agree, widening the cone of damaged after initial impact could really step them up to be one of the best weapons you could use on a fighter type ship, although I'd personally always recommend still have either auto or assault cannons to back it up
@@Zer0sLegion They could be used as spinal weapons for motherships as they can create holes for infiltrators and drones to work their way through the inside, or a window to a subsystem. Not very useful on their own, but they can be strategically abused
@@Zer0sLegion you forgot to mention the greatest weapon of them all, the clang gun.
I also wonder if you have seen the gatling rail gun.....
Sounds dope
For single player the small grid fixed assault cannon is panacea for taking over SPRT station and ships as you can hang outside turret range and pick off all of it's turrets and antenna with precision. The 2km range of it outclasses anything the space pirates currently have and the ammo is dirt cheap.
assuming the SPRT ship would even fire at you to begin with. Some, like the RUST, are broken and WILL NOT FIRE BACK, not even the interior turrets. Meaning all ya gotta do is snip the antennas.
@@ceilyurie856 It's because Keen never updated the magazine inventory for the new turrets. They're still putting the 5.56NATO magazines in the turrets which are so outdated you can't even build/deconstruct them in an assembler.
The ultimate weapon in the game are custom kinetic missiles, preferrably with script control. This thing, loaded with hangar door blocks or container with stacks of stone can bork the game and punch moon-sized holes in any kind of armor. Cant be effectively intercepted, since there are no explosives as main source of damage. If this kind of missile uses glitch drive, it also even doesnt give any time for turrets to take it out.
that is until keen updates the space pirate weaponry ( i know if ever ) but still havin sprt ships updated would be the nightmare of many o.O
The railgun would be better as a combat opening weapon over a continuous combat weapon. 1 or 2 railguns on the front of your main battle ship would be good to surprise the enemy with a strong shot. on top of this, the railgun's impulse is strong enough to turn a ship, so you could use it more strategically to get the enemy ship to face in a certain way where it's more vulnerable. Another good use is to strike weak spots. With the addition of turret controllers, we gained the ability to tell turrets what to aim at. Putting a railgun turret down with instructions to attack only power generators would be a very good strategic option for a few railgun turrets on a high armoured creation. This would allow for the periodic destruction of reactors during combat, due to the overall damage per shot of the railgun, over the other weapons, which could be used to target armament of the enemy ship, engines, control systems, fighters, the latter. This makes the railgun the best for a support ship's armaments, or as a support armament for a combat oriented ship.
tl;dr:
So, as a main weapon, the railgun does suck. But as a support weapon, used to assist in combat by targeting essential systems, it surpasses all the other weapons by a long way.
Yeah, I have no problem with using the railguns, the best overall strategy is to have a variety of guns. Just overall, i'd recommend less railguns.
I bet he plays German bb's in WOWS 😂
Or put a few rail guns big or small on a fast and humble ship for hit and run or sniping strats
The railgun has a really nice use, you can get rid of all the turrets and go in and take the ship. It's actually rather good at acquiring ships without taking out too much of the internals.
Yha, like in “The Expanse”.
The first thing I ever built was a fighter I named the “beautiful boy”. It had 20 railguns. When I shot it, it sent me backwards and took away all my power. I still have that design saved and enjoy terrorizing my friend with it sometimes.
"Beautiful Boy, what a odd ship na-"
@@I-Stole-Your-Toast700 **gets obliterated out of existence**
I've got a cruiser class called broadside that has 15 large railguns mounted to the port side. When in doubt return to 18th century naval stratagy.
The thing about the railgun is that its one line. You don't have to hit the same place multiple times to reach a component, its one shot and it goes through most ships
I like the railgun for the concept of using it to disable a ship. It can accurately target a ship's power systems, which is very nice
I use it to target thrusters. It’s easier to hit a target that can’t move.
@@hadeshades2365 unless you destroy the front ones on accident and it doesn't stop lol. Not that that SHOULD happen, just a thought is all
Playermade weapons are also something of note. Piston guns have come very far as far as size and speed, and mobious industries weapons (most notably swarm missiles) are all terrifying and a garunteed kill basically. The inenginuity of the community knows no bounds.
I'd like to make a custom railgun that would fire a pallet of armed warheads
@@mistermidnight1823 already have a few ships in construction for that. They have multi purpose tubes, so you can build your own projectiles/missile. The only difficulty is adding the small grid together in a legit manner (docking not supergridding) while trying to stay compact.
If you count clang guns you'd have to downgrade literally every other weapon to D tier. I've personally seen piston guns that shot things at twice the max speed and split 10k block ships in two with one shot.
@@System0Error0Message
Large grid hinge -> remove hinge head -> add small grid head -> lock hinge. Easy.
As for the warhead, I will have to disagree with the D ranking. Sure, it has the flaws of it CAN be shot down and you have to build your own delivery system, but a good delivery system can be 98% printed, has ways to avoid being targeted effectively, and can cause massive damage.
And I rarely take "cost" into consideration, because after 3 or so hours, enough resource locations have been mapped/mined that cost is rarely an issue.
I would at least give the warhead a C.
For the missile launcher, use timer blocks to Salvo. Basically you'll have a missile machine gun. Set 9 timer blocks attached to 9 rockets all set to start at 1 second. They will fire 9 rockets separately in the course of 1 second. All my vehicles have this for their rocket Turrets and it decimates all grids.
Should do this with the autocannon or assault cannon as its shots can't be shot down and you can shoot further than 800m.
I think it would be worthwhile to consider pure kinetic weapons. Building a missile with a warhead is expensive, placing a drill on a hydrogen tank and a thruster is braindead easy and cheap. The damage output is massive as well, because collisions are just that destructive.
Speaking of warheads, you're also forgetting that decoys exist. They're stupid cheap (decoy + battery + merge block is all you need) and they're very helpful in getting your missiles to the target without them getting shot down. Custom missiles also have unlimited range, and with clever use of scripts and camera raycasting you can aim them from thousands of meters away. I think warheads deserve to be higher up, maybe C or B tier; besides, you don't have to put warheads on missiles, you can just board a ship, build a warhead in it, start its timer and run.
Yes and artillery at least A since it is very powerful and move up even assault cuz man one hit can be kill and that applies even to railgun judging weapon by how faster it fires isn't really the thing to aim for
Using a hydrogen tank as a weapon 🤣🤣 I gotta try that haha
@@yamatokurusaki5790 it was already discussed: even railgun rounds can ricochet, finding the weakspot on an enemy ship is difficult at best, and different ship internal designs can remove the central weakspot altogether.
@@The-lr4zo trust me every ship has weak spot
It is hard to spot weak spot yea on some ships not really
@@yamatokurusaki5790 you can scatter 27 small containers over the entire ship instead of having a central large container. This means losing a container doesn't also mean that your ENTIRE ammo load gets turned right back at you. Same with hydrogen tanks and power production.
I'd use railguns on fighter bombers, since a fighter is likely to get closer to the enemy than a large ship will, and you can flick your wrist while flying it. It'd be used to specifically target enemy guns and engines.
Another nail in the Railgun’s coffin is that after you charged it you still have to aim it, spin it up and fire. Realistically the large grid is firing more like every 70-80 secs.
i actually think the warhead is a verry effective weapon if used the right way! the one i got for mine: is a huge gravity accellerator launcher and space balls+warhead+merge block as 1 projectile (why no armor piece in front ? faster reloading ... like 2 a sec almost) 4 welders per projectile block and voala you gotten yourself a super rapid firing weapon that absolutely can overwhelm enemy defences with pure firerate projectile spamming, and the damage output once they hit ... gargantuan
What I find really funny is that the areas these weapons are the most effective is basically exactly opposite to what you'd expect.
Normally you'd think that small caliber weapons are best suited for anti-air purposes, while the heavier weapons are really good against capital ships.
However the reality is that gatling guns are really well suited for stripping a heavy enemy ship of weapons, while assault and artillery canons are really good for taking out fighters because of their higher bullet velocity and the fact that it usually only takes a single lucky hit to completely cripple whatever small ship they hit.
the warhead is in an interesting position where it's only as effective as you can make it but it's only limited by what you can create. it's hard to use but it can form the core of devastating large-scale weapons, whereas all the other weapon types are limited by their immutability.
Thing like cluster missile designs come to mind.
@@deathstreak1156 One can easily drop dozens of warhead bombs on a base. Or lay a minefield with them. But thats the thing, it requires bigger thinking on deployment.
As soon as I saw it I immediately knew it for what it was: the SE version of plastic explosives. You take a group of dudes, infiltrate a base via the basement, plant that thing on something that goes boom, and it’s infinitely worth it, because the cost of building one single warhead is well outweighed by the cost of a base. And, using the rail gun, you could make a hole in an enemy ship/station for the infiltration team to go through to plant it.
@@niklai1178 Even better. Make a drop pod with a battering ram to exploit the breach. The drop pod is going to cleave through the breached armor and reach inside the ship.
One thing to consider for the penetrative weapons though- if you hit a hydrogen tank or cargo container with explosive items in it, it can potentially score a critical hit that decimates the target. Even though it doesn't deal nearly as much damage over time, that penetrative power can potentially be enough to one-shot an enemy ship. That gives the railgun, artillery cannon, and assault cannon a solid leg-up against the gatling and assault cannon, especially on large grid ships.
One thing I've also noticed is that while rockets do suck, they are REALLY good at downing smaller grids due to their explosive AOE damage being able to shred even heavy small-grid armor. I think that their munitions move way too slow to be practical atm, and their range is just pathetic (and I hope that keen fixes both of these issues), but even with those drawbacks they're still pretty solid at quickly disabling an incoming small grid fighter. (Though I do agree that all-in-all they are the worst weapon)
Yeah, that's fine but you still have to hit. The slow fire rate is a bigger factor imo as you shoot less often making hitting more important.
And for rockets, the AOE is very handy, I just wish the weapon itself was more reliable. And, whilst not mentioned in the video, they also have the slowest projectiles as well, making the even more difficult to aim.
What would make rockets more worthwhile would be to make them home in on targets like in weapon corps tbh.
@@Zer0sLegion it’s in that case that you gotta have the mix. You use the faster firing weapons to keep the pressure on the enemy and dealing damage to the hull and weapon systems while the massive penetrating weapons take out the more integral systems and fuel.
@@Zer0sLegion you've got it backwards on slow firing weapons. Missing 60% of shots on a slow weapons is the same damage loss as missing 60% if shots on a fast weapon. The difference is with the slower fire weapon you're able to spend all your time between shots focusing purely on evading your opponent. Gatlings or autos you have to focus both on evading and keeping your nose on target at the same time.
@@vadernation1233 I very much agree, mainly because the turret version IS LEGIT CALLED A MISSILE TURRET
Missiles are not DUMBFIRE weapons! XD
The only thing I'll say for the Missile launchers is that if your enemy's galling guns are shooting down missiles, they aren't shooting you.
Though the expense over-offsets that I suppose
for general purpose fighting, definitely. but you can use them to give cover for things like deploying dropships or screening a warhead-laden torpedo salvo
Obviously, the best weapon is using all weapons on a ship to cover any scenario you come across as they have their own strengths and weaknesses when fighting ships.
I would rank the railgun higher. The one thing you forgot to mention is velocity. When shooting at ships farther away, the higher muzzle velocity means you have to lead the target less and there will be a lot less drop from gravity (main issue with artillery at a distance).
So rail gun is even worse than that for two reasons:
1) the rail gun is a high penetrator but over penetrates. Meaning your damage is a thin line that cuts through and easily misses.
2) they have enormous energy cost meaning small ships can actually disable themselves which leaves you vulnerable
I think the whole purpose of stuff like the rail gun is that they want them to be used in combinations. Railgun being used as a kind of "hit them upfront and gut them stem to stern" sort of deal while other weapons are meant to deal wide range of damage. warheads need a bit of an upgrade but would be good as mines.
Late to this but one of the multi-uses for the interior turret's turning and shooting speed is that it is quite effective for warhead and meteor screening.
Yeah, it's the most accurate weapon in SE by far
Warheads are amazing if you have a good method of getting them on target like missiles and clang cannons, easily the best weapon in the game to the point of being overpowered. Small warheads not so much, but large warheads can split a battleship in half in one shot.
Other details you missed is the velocity of the railgun, its fast, its important. Also turrets vs custom turrets, the normal turrets for assault cannons and artillery have ludicrous amounts of health, thats an important factor in fights.
Huh, surprised that the original weapon, that's been in since the start, hasn't been included: Ramming
Ah good fun in the very early stages of game development when there were no weapons, building specialist blade ramming ships to cut other ships in half
Also, what about the second weapon in the game:
Gravity propelled rock cannons
Unfortunately gravity based rock and ore cannons no longer work. The damage against floating ore was patched out a long time ago
Ramming but mounting a warhead on a spar is godly
im gonna ask you the question cause you seemed to have played the game, i always wonder when i watch youtube video about it...why arent they doing some sort of pod that they launch at ennemie whit a shit load of gatling on it....if the main ship is far away from the actual battle and that the ennemie is occupied whith shoting down the pod that are blocking his ways and shoting him, it meaning that the main ship could have artilery or laser canon to support from afar...but i dont know i never played the game maybe this strat sucks
@@guillaumerattaire290 i think i've seen a video of someone doing something similar with explosives
@@guillaumerattaire290 someone did exactly what you said but like 10 times deadlier imagine that pod had ai and a drill on it and when it touches i ship it drills to its reactor and drops small turret drones in random areas inside the ship (it was a very old video and i dont remember what it was even called. the guy made several versions of it too i think he even made a hacking variant of it)
I use warheads as a bunker buster kind of thing. It's best used in creative but essentially a ship welds a merge block connected to a warhead with a sensor and when it falls it blows upm not the most practical and resource efficient but it's fun
I'd put missiles a little higher on the list, the splash damage is still useful. Also, a salvo of missiles can be a good decoy to keep enemy gattlings busy shooting at something else instead of your ship. Also, you have to take into consideration the fact that we have a hand held variant, which is just cool. Overall I'd say it's somewhere between b and c, it has it's uses but is expensive to make ammo, and it's more of a support weapon than a primary one.
You missed the part where artillery guns have steep firing arc. This may make them a bit more difficult to use but it is the only weapon that allows you to engage targets over a berm or ridge or when attacking from a hidden depression. Of course you have to be on a planet for this to work but it works beautifully. If you can range like in World of Warships then this is your weapon of choice. So now I like building self propelled howitzers. I will start off with a large grid gun assembly and then have it mated on top of a small grid chassis. This gives you a lower profile while maintaining that large grid splash damage. The Assault gun is not bad for arcing fire but it's more flat trajectory.
It’s great that the video factors in the cost of the ammo types, as many other videos of it’s like don’t consider such things, but I think the cost of the turrets themselves and the real-estate they take up should also be considered as well.
DPS is a great starting point for determining how effective a weapon is for a space engineers, as combat tends to be long and drawn out. However, it doesn’t tell the whole story. The rail gun for example has great alpha strike potential, and therefore must have a poor DPS to maintain game balance. They still suck compared to how much Real-estate and energy they need tho!
It really comes down to tactics, strategy, and logistics. You want plentiful and easy access to (logistics), the right weapon (tactics), for the mission at hand (strategy).
the only time i found a good use for warheads was when I was playing a PvP multiplayer campaign thing where I literally tunneled under an enemy base, planted bombs and got out.
originally I was planning on planting a bomb on the structural pieces of the base which was connected to the ground since it was from what I could tell at a distance it was on struts, I ended up finding their under ground storage and was able to blow that to high hell knocking the base into a non static structure
I think a lot of the lower tier weapons can easily be fixed by lowering the base cost of ammunition and making more expensive ammo alternatives that pack a much larger punch (uranium tipped rounds, warheads with larger payloads, dirty bombs...)
I think a way to make the missiles worth it would be to crank the damage up. Have it deal something like 5000 damage at ground zero, with diminishing damage the farther the target is from impact. That would make them terrifying to go against as they would just punch craters in you ship if you don't waste ammo shooting them down
Despite its drawbacks I feel that the rail gun probably benefits the most from building multiple especially in a broadside type of configuration. Yes they cost a lot but building multiple can decrease the cooldown time by staggering the shots or it can be used as a quick massive burst of damage to try to increase your chances of hitting critical systems.
I could just build artillery for nearly a third the cost and a much higher dps
warheads are excellent for planetary mining. Place it around 25-30 meters from the ore being indicated and it blows a great big open hole to it so you can reach it easily.
I use the Warhead as a finisher weapon on the server I'm on. We have a more atmosphere fights so if you can take out their engines a single warhead will destroy them. Granted we also have modded thrusters that are cheap and are for stabilization and slight coarse adjustments so we strap those on it to make it more likely to hit.
For the railgun, irl a big problem we have is heat, whenever a gauss rifle or railgun shoots it heats up a lot. So to combat that and improve the fire rate i would be interesting to install radiators and attach them to the railgun.
The heat vent could be used for that.
I only use missiles as a "door knocker" breaching weapon for smaller ships. The idea is to quickly knock out something like a window or door so you can get inside a ship more easily/quickly. But I wouldn't use them them for pretty much anything else.
As for large railgun, my way to increase their effectiveness is to add a rotor with a singe stack of blocks out like a fan blade and a circle of sensors each controlling fire now on each railgun to create a burst fire and give me a better shot spread in a critical area.
Another reason railguns are hard to use is the firing delay, when you pull the trigger there's a slight delay before it actually fires.
This isn't so bad if your firing it at a massive ship or station, but any other target is probably not going to be in the same place by the time you fire unless your compensating for movement.
True! Something rarely considered.
Honestly, the artillery cannon would be perfect for a Swordfish II build due to it's profile, not to mention it's slow fire rate and damage output too.
I remember when we were trying to make a railgun and ended up making a gravity drive. 0-100m/s in 1s. Good work with the stats!
“Space engineer used to have only four different types of weapons”
*me who’s seen gameplay when ramming was the only option and engines could be put behind covered panels* “am I a joke to you?”
Your presentation and editing skills for this game is unmatched. Keep it up!!!
Much appreciated!
How I might improve Missiles and Warheads is make the missiles homing, so they're less likely to miss, and maybe add more variants to the Warheads and maybe rename it to something like Mines ore Explosives
Please cover the copy target function, it allows for the ai to shoot at the weapons max distance.
I love using it with custom turrets. And for custom turret missiles.
(For that matter I noticed the small custom turret controller has a shorter ai max auto fire distance, compared to the large block version)
Because of the fact that missiles can be shot down they actually make a fairly good decoy rather then a straight up weapon. If the enemy turrets are firing at the swarm of missiles coming towards them then they aren't shooting at you and if they do not have missile turrets themselves then all of your turrets are going to do damage to their ship which will end with you having a massive DPS advantage over the enemy ship plus the missiles themselves will do damage if they don't end up getting shot down which will boost the DPS advantage over your opponent even more.
I wonder how effective it would be to make a sort of railgun bomber swarm, with lighter fighters deploying decoys as a screen. Put one or two railguns on each bomber, then fly them in close enough under the screen to make accurate shots at weapons engines the bridge or other vulnerable areas. Since the recharge time is 15 seconds you may be able to rotate them out, fly a few in to shoot then they turn around to recharge while the next few follow up behind.
Honestly if they added any form of stealth systems I think warheads would be a lot more viable.
I combine all of these weapons (besides warhead ) into ships I make (Gatling gun for AA and stuff) interior for bridge defence missiles for ground strikes, auto cannons as main turrets on smaller ships, the attack turret thing for bigger ships with primary, artillery for long range strikes on ground and destroying enemy ships bridges, railgun for wreaking havoc on enemy ships and bases if I want a quick run.😅
I use interior turrets on the exterior of my ships for missile defense. It frees up the main turrets to focus on the enemy ship, and because they have such a small foot print and don't need a conveyor I can slap them anywhere.
It's taken some effort to get used to the massive bullet drop the game has now. Also, I used to have fun downing Air Traffic ships with a fighter but the other day I hammered on a hunchback until I ran out of ammo (hard-mounted assaults and autos). Getting hits on the lift thrusters was almost impossible. I don't want to stick turrets on my fighter but I might have to go the auto-aim route.
If you lock onto ships, the lead indicator accounts for gravity.
@@Zer0sLegion Yep, did that. Didn't help much trying to hit specific components when both ships are maneuvering. Maybe I'll slap a railgun on it...
i agree with everything except 2 things:
1 warhead is B tier, super useful for sabotaging enemy ships, and does the most damage in the game, so if you build a missle swarm you can one shot every ship
2 railgun is A tier, high accuracy shots mean you can destroy enemy turrets of a base before you are even in range. Also if you hit a long ship from the front you are gonna tear it in half
The cooldown on the railgun is a big oof
@@Zer0sLegion It is, but you use it just as the "opener shot" in a battle to destroy the interior modules, and then you go with Assault cannons and turrets
@@wildocado5376 A weapon that you can only use once or twice per fight must be able to end that fight consistently or at least cripple the enemy ship. The railgun does neither making it an ineffective weapon when compared with the other options that you could have built using the material.
If you use it to chip away at an enemies defenses from a distance then they will likely launch a fighter or other ship to attack, and having a massive liability on your ship will make it certain that the fight will be more costly that if you had just used another weapon. And even if the enemy base does not have any fighters or is undefended, you have just built a weapon that is only usable in an incredibly rare situation and is ineffective in combat, this could have been better used to just make another ship that could fight other ships and bases, rather than be exclusive to attacking the few undefended bases you could come across.
@Nic You can use railgun against AFK bases, and warhead for tunneling.
But warheads are just fun to play with, not necessarily effective, it's cool to build missiles
@Nic they all have their specific use.
The warhead is great if you know how to use it. I make rail guns with grav generators. The ammo is a large grid strip tipped with heavy armor, then a sensor, then a warhead or two and artificial mass. The sensor sets off the warhead a second after detecting the target ship, which is usually just after the ammo penetrates the target ship. It blows up inside the ship.
Yeah, if it hits, it's only a small waste of resources
Rail Gun as the payload of a built self-guiding missile. Operations Spear Fish, the missile does not strike the target, the rail gun does and therefore it is a different tactical problem to a normal missile
I now have an idea to arrange 4 small railguns in a revolver-like pattern, turning to the next after each one fires, to have a pretty decent shot every 3.75 seconds. I will definitely test that idea some day when ill have enough game knowledge to set up and utilize such a contraption
I like it when the gun has big boom and the damage number real big, make monkey warrior brain happy with the cinematic explosion of the enemy
🐵
So a large grid custom ball turret packed full of autocannons would be SS tier?
1 of the best weapon setups I found to be 8 autocannons on a ball turret set to Target weapons. The enemy cannot resist
Basically yeah, the more firerate you have the better in my opinion
No, custom turrets are incredibly fragile and not PCU efficient once you factor in the numerous other components to make it work. You'd be better off with a well armored fixed subgrid of longer range weapons or the standard turrets.
@@SpacemanSpraggz after like 15 test designs I actually managed to create a custom turret that did not instantly get severed from my craft after getting shot and I have to say, once you have a functional one, they are absolutely devastating
I’ve always found railguns to be the most useful when you have a friend that distracting the enemy and you can blast them from far away, or just use it to snipe important engines on enemy ships
I'm surprised gatling still does any damage to heavy armor at all still, and i think railguns are decentish for alpha damage and creating holes for other munitions to follow after. Since there is no fixed arty or auto then it's between rails and missile launchers and i'd pick rails.
So, Halo boy here, and I have some experience in rail guns.
The railgun is NOT a midships gun. It is NOT a broadside gun. The railgun is the most effective when you are aiming down the length of the ship. You want a center mass hit that punches through the nose or the tail. It's also the sort of gun best situated for building a ship around, like the A10 warthog is built around its main cannon. It should be a forward weapon mostly concealed inside the ship's hull.
And warheads, you're looking at the active use and missing the passive. Warheads are excellent mines. Put a little series of fabiricators on the rear, display a hologram, and craft up a deadly defensive shield.
Notable advantage of the railgun: It's Sabots are way smaller the shells used by an assault cannon, making them a great option if ammo capacity on a small grid is an issue.
I have never played or even heard of this game before this video so take this with a couple dozen grains of salt, but some balancing ideas for:
The warhead - Make the payload variable, with a higher damaging payloads costing more material (probably uranium at the very least). Significantly lower the price of the current damage level. Then you have the option to make a really powerful but high value one shot weapon, which probably wouldn't be great due to inconsistency but hopefully it'd be fun.
The Railgun - Significantly increase it's damage to all armour and maybe introduce some kind of energy shield block(If similar to heavy armour), which would be relatively expensive to maintain electricity-wise and can reflect (Completely nullifying) the railgun's shots. Also seemingly in the game, I'd have reflected railgun shots impart significant force onto the ship, so it could be used as a stun/combo tool to throw off opponents even if it doesn't directly damage
Missiles - Generally faster speed (Especially in space), health and damage, maybe also change it's firing patterns to be a more obvious burst damage weapon to be used in conjunction with other consistent forms of sustained DPS? Idk enough about the way this game is played to provide more.
I'd love to hear thoughts from those with literally any experience playing this game, I imagine these changes would need a lot of work to suit the pacing of the game's combat
I use warheads inside ships to detonate the core
autocannons need a spot in A, because if you put several down they can obliterate small grids
Yeah, you're probably right, they're very good.
the war head is the most fun in my opinion its an easy way to self destruct your ship or base to prevent enemy players from taking it and it can be used as a era system if done right i designed a ship that ejects sections of its armor if they become too beat up thus making the ship lighter and leaving the equivalent of the alley way garbage can and if you do it right you can get a whole mini ship installed and literally launch it towards your enemy as a weapon in and of itself or just that really aggressive ship defense lol
I like adding a raulgun custom turret controller with a few barrels on any large base or a couple static ones on heavy fighters. Basically you're sacrificing one turret point for a dice roll to cripple an enemy ship or base. Sure, the most likely thing to happen is just a miss or at best some big armor damage, but there's also a chance that you basically instantly win.
Just put 6 static auto cannons on a custom turret and it's really good for shooting down small and large grids.
There's a mod I Always use called "Vanilla homing missiles" which bumps missiles up to C or even B tear in my book. It makes fighter crafts a lot more effective
I love the idea of he updates and the fact that it gives you a chance to build your own turrets like you can do with your ship. One question does come into mind and that’s is if the turrets builds can fire on their own like normal turrets because in battle you don’t really have time to manually operate every turret or have enough players to do it. But one thing for sure is that you can make a turret that’s special in one type of weapon or combination of them. This can make more ways of making defenses as well and could be interesting if someone does create an indoor turret, but can be overkill and might mess up the base or ship than the players it shooting at.
One thing I might do when I get the game is probably make a ship with custom turrets that can boom-bard enemy base’s. But one thing that I can think for a good use of rail guns is for anti orbital ship cannons because it can hit fast and far keeping ships on edge in space if there in range. But this is just an idea and has not yet been tested so far from what I have seen because people practically never use them in battles often, but if it can then that is one best use I can think of for a practical defense turret.
The ones i use the most are the gatling, assault cannon, small grid railgun and large warheads.
The gatlings for defense and offense, assault and railgun for sniping, and warheads for cavedigging.
Missiles i found best for recycling.
Glad this video came up in my recommendeds thanks for explaining the new update weapon and also for introducing me to the Custom Turrets, I like making motherships and my current one just wasn't having the right feeling with the defense grid and main weapons, will likely be switching out my forward turret deck with custom cycle firing Artillary
What I do for the warheads is just shove a load of explosive components in a grinded down cargo container (medium - large container) and I have a warhead behind that container, and the large blast radius of the explosive components damages large ships really well and gives small grids or light armour builds a hard time surviving or existing after a blast
I want someone to build a ship that looks normal, but its entire inside is a GIANT custom turret with enormous firepower.
A guy in my old faction made a giant octopus with 4 rail guns on turrets on each arm and hidden thrusters inside. And the arms were covered with normal turrets. Thing was insane!
The rail gun is used to say hello before getting in closer for another weapon.
How about projectile speed? To be honest I don’t have pvp experience but high projectile speed (like railgun) in conjunction with highest range gives more strong point that haven’t been mentioned in a video. 100m/s Moving target at 2km range can be hit by railgun and give possibility to make a first shot on enemy and with higher speed of projectile you need less lead to aim
You're completely correct. Range + projectile speed is king. Your dps doesn't matter if your opponent never comes into range.
I took it into consideration when making the rankings but for the most part, it's not that different between weapon.
Missiles fire the slowest and Gatling's are the fastest as far as I'm aware, although the railgun is pretty fast.
@@Zer0sLegion IIRC the gatling gun moves at ~417 m/s and the railgun moves at 1000 m/s
Something to also note: Assault cannons will bounce off of large grid light and heavy armor at a certain angle or more. I have yet to figure out what that angle is but it seems to be like 45*
I recently made a script that lets you control an entire array of guns (like artillery, assault cannon, railgun, etc.) and shoot them in sequence so that they don't all fire at once. The script also displays the optimal firerate for how many of those guns you have so you can have a steady stream of shots.
It's pretty fun when you can full auto fire railgun shots with like 120 railguns shooting back to back
Sounds cool, I'll check it out
@@Zer0sLegion I haven't uploaded it anywhere...
@@nofas5883 then I won't check it out...
On a small fighter i built a railgun to snipe turrets on npc ships for hijacking purposes, or at encounters. About half way through my first encounter/test i ground down the railgun and put in an artillery cannon instead. The railgun was too expensive and slow to be worth it as a sniper. Furthermore it kept destroying the turrets in a way the ammo got destroyed too, so no ammo loot.
While the arty allowed for sniping and did enough damage to disable turrets without fully destroying the blocks from a single hit. Preserving the ammo inside for looting.
The great thing about the assault cannon: It can put a small grid large hydrogen tank on fire even through 2 heavy armor blocks in one single shot
A custom turret of 4 Railguns is damn near stupidly excessive. Like that's 50k focused on a pretty precise area.
I mean if it hits something square on, its getting obliterated, but how is anybody gonna justify needing that much high precision fire power for 1 shot every minute.
"If it hits" the main problem with the railgun.
Hmmm has anyone looked into the mechanics of why railguns bounce off? It feels like that would be useful for ship design.
What makes rockets even worse is their excessive PCU compared to the other weapons, since it has to calculate splash damage. All the artillery and rail guns just delete blocks in the projectile’s way.
Wait, I just remembered that the missile turret is 275 PCU, whereas the static racket launcher is 825 PCU. So maybe the splash calculation isn’t the main reason the static one is so high, still have to wonder why it is.
I think it would be kind of cool if railguns and artillery had different ammo types. In terms of railguns, it's a railguns, as long as it's magnetic in some way it will come flying down the barrel. Armour piercing rounds, explosive rounds, ion rounds (knocks out power on a given radius on a ship or something like that). Maybe even beehive or some shotgun-like round that can just blanket a target in low damage projectiles. Same with artillery, AP and HE, maybe a combination of the two with slightly less damage, ion could be a railguns only round, beehive could go on artillery too, but this would be like the original beehive. Anti fighter role.
New ammo types would be cool but the Railgun works by accelerating a metal rod very fast using magnets, not sure it would need other ammo types.
Missiles are good at close range battles with dreadnouts. Ship props: 1 missle launcher, heavy armor, turret AI decoys, lots of engines and gyroscopses. Fly close to ship, lock target on turret and shoot. With this build each dreadnout quicly becomes weaponless... No weapons - no damage - dreadnout can be hijacked... But it's still better to use smal AI controlled warhead drones...
on PvP servers i use the Railgun as a Breaching gun to basically Guarantee a way inside either a base or a ship when whatever crew i join end up raiding bases. and since it has such a long range we can fire at ships and bases without needing to sacrifice any armor or anything else to get it done, as we need that to bait shots from turrets when we do end up breaching and entering.
I made a broadside ship utilizing the railguns, it has (if I remember correctly) 12 railguns on each side with the option to do a staggering fire (give a shot every 5 seconds, thus a dps of 10000) or full broadside bringing 12 railguns onto one target at once. But yeah I agree railguns are quite bad especially since things like piston jolt guns can be made which allows for special ammo types, quick fire rate, and projectiles that don't have set ranges [modified one to send a projectile at 700 m/s]
interior turrets are surprisingly good at point defense if your fighting someone who can pay for rocket ammo, or have a mod the makes rockets cheaper.
I find it hard to accurately class weapons for Space Engineers as they each fill a specific niche. To think of each being used as the sole weapon on a ship ignores the fact that they are not meant to be used that way. Railguns and Artillery take a long time to rechamber, but lighter weapons can cover while they reload. Light weapons are consistent, but struggle to punch through thick armor like heavies.
Yes, they struggle per shot to break through armour, but every weapon in the game has higher dps than the railgun so in the same amount of time they do more damage.
@@Zer0sLegion As a flat number, yes. The point is, why have just one when you can exploit the strengths of both?
Imagine a turret that doesnt fire at where you ARE, but where you are GOING TO BE.
Its basically the first shown turret, but when it detects a player, it uses their velocity on all 3 axis (x, y, z) to predict where they are going to be, and thus, where to shoot.
You can however confuse them with eratic and wild movements.
How do yall like my idea?
i feel the Warhead should be higher because yes it can be shot down and is expensive but you can make autoseeking land mines with the new Warfare Custome Turret update... just imagine it things that lay in wait on a Multiplayer server for the enemy faction to come up where BAM they spring into action and launch themselves at the enemy then BOOM and there ship is damaged if not destroyed!
The railgun is for picking off the critical joints and possibly the bridge
The whole point of real railguns is that they shoot through EVERYTHING. They're made more to precisely take out individual heavily armoured components rather than cause damage to the target as a whole. The SE ones are pretty underpowered, but that's probably to conserve the balance.
If you can hit
@@Zer0sLegion In real life we have much better targeting systems.
Auto cannon and assault cannon turrets belong in s class. My reason is I've built small grid ships with high acceleration and I turn off my gyros when fighting certain targets. My favorite combo is two auto turrets and 1 assault I set everything to target weapons systems and travel slightly slower than the ship pursuing me and take control of the assault cannon and start sniping around 1 km out and it hasn't failed me yet
Warheads deserve C tier or better, because they are a tool for bombardment. It is impractically expensive to tackle bases which are buried underground without warheads, meaning a ship that drops cheap/simple unguided anti-voxel bombs is pretty much a necessity unless you want to barge in the front door (which they may not even have one of a suitable size for your attack vehicles, leading to a scenario of ineffective infantry combat where they have the defensive turret advantage).
Granted it's just one use, but that one use is a job NOTHING ELSE in the game does cheaper. The only other option to do the job is dropping long pillars of heavy armor or blast doors at the speed cap to make a deep hole, or making some kind of combat drilling ship (which is insane).
Can't argue with numbers but the design and feel is important to me as well. It's just cool to fire an assault cannon or build a gunship with a coaxial railgun.
Warheads are VERY versatile. They really don't belong on this list because they aren't a projectile firing weapon, When they are paired with a well designed weapon system that a skilled engineer can create and implement then they can be very effective and you might not have to get into a fight before it's over with them even in survival. With the new update they are even more deadly and I'm excited to be working on the most destructive devices with them.
railgun seems like it would be good for opening shock and awe. surprise your opponent and then use gatling guns.
The usefulness of warheads completely changes when scripts are enabled.
Scripted guided missiles with automatic evasion.
Speedlimit-breaking clang guns with APHE shells.
Kamikaze drones that ram the target after taking too much damage.
But it would be the scripts that are s tier not the weapon. Any weapon can be s tier with scripts
@@Zer0sLegion That does make a lot of sense, actually. You should do a video on the best player made weapons.