Pinning some corrections here: +The Expanded Magazines hullmod does not affect the light or heavy needler +The Hypervelocity Driver and the Heavy Mauler have the same range of 1,000 Other things I'd amend: +My ranking for the railgun didn't account for its accuracy advantage so I'd say it deserves B-tier at the very least +In the next tier list I'll change how I categorize the weapons so the order is more logical Thank to all who tuned in to watch!

Weapons with low accuracy and a large spread during prolonged shooting can be placed in fixed slots, where they greatly lose their negative features. There are a lot of ships with fixed frontal weapon slots and they often lack flux to shoot energy-intensive weapons. This is where the Arbalest cannon comes to the rescue. The point is that you either play from the range on individual ships that are left to themselves, or from a massive simultaneous attack with the expectation that you have a more profitable general flux exchange.

I respect other people having different opinions, and utilising all kinds of strats, but oh boy this one has a bunch of things that don't make sense, or are just factually wrong. First, Thumper and Storm Needler are the only 2 ballistic weapons that work with Expanded Mags, nothing else has magazines, they just fire normally on a cooldown. And s-modded Exp Mags is so strong, I'm surprised you haven't mentioned it on Storm Needler, it becomes broken good. Just put it on a ship that has a mobility system and you're good for kinetic damage on a single weapon. So putting Storm Needler in C tier while Gauss is somehow B makes zero sense, Gauss has only one use case, Conquest kiting, everwhere else it's a huge waste of flux. You said you value flux efficiency but didn't even mention the horrendous 1.71 efficiency, the worst out of all ballistic weapons. Railgun being in C tier together with Thumper and Mortar weapons is just criminal, it's the most versatile ballistic weapon in the game. Good DPS, good efficiency, good range, excellent precision (anti-fighter duty), and it's cheaper than the Light Needler. It can do just about anything unless you really really want burst damage of Needlers. HAG and Devastator should've been swapped, Devastator is waaaay too situational for it to be in A tier. It's an afterthought weapon which deals with a problem that doesn't even exist. You'll never be so deep in fighters that you have to have a Devastator. It's a decent knife fighting weapon tho, since half of the shots won't be exploding on nothing. It seems like you haven't experimented much with HAG, the claim that it doesn't deal enough damage is ludicrous, it's 480 HE DPS, where else are you going to get that power? And it does have a role, punching armor in literally everything and punishing dropping shields. Mauler can be shield flickered, HAG can't. I was also once a HAG hater but the buffs made it deadly, precision buff was huge. Constantly hitting the same spot on armor is enough to bring down everything in the game. Basically a ballistic High Intensity Laser. Lastly, while you were critical of some weapons and their use cases, you were very favouring of the Assault Chaingun, basing it's performance on piloting an SO frigate. And that's pretty much the only place where AC is good, SO ships which are fast enough in the first place. P.S. Minor nitpick: You were showing stats of the weapons on the side, but when you compared the 2 similar weapons the auxiliary data showed the stats of just one weapon, where I think in every situation the 2 weapons had different refire delay.

I gotta say, I love tierlists, hearing different opinions and learning about something you might've missed

It would really help if you divided the Tier list in to columns by (small,medium, large mounts) and/or (kinetic,explosive,energy) -> it would give a much better overview of where each thing lies.

Keep it up man, great info.

People are very emotional with (low tech) ballistics. In general you understand the concept well even if some builds are better with tier C and D weapons (Onslaught). You have to see it globally, as you do, and not on 1 or 2 ships. My changes: both mortars D tier, railgun A tier, Mauler S tier, Storm Needler ... sometimes S tier and B tier. When you face Remnants with Low Tech, the enemy AI rush at you and the range gap doesnt matter. It's only how fast you can overflux them, that's why Storm Needler is good. Against normal faction and for certain ships, it's another story. Like Gauss Manticore is pretty good with all its range bonus.

Flaks definetly are not A tier, for one reason: their lack of range. Yes, you can get some decent effective range if you mount them on capitals with range boosts and Point defence skill. But that's the only place where it becomes B tier for overall missile defence role, since burst pd lasers excel at it and fighter defence is much better by the Thumper thanks to its burst damage nature and range. Why is their lack of range so important? Angular velocity and how weapons target in Starsector. When a target enters the range for a weapon, weapons go through a moment of aiming at the incoming and calculating where they need to shoot to lead into it. This is something that laser burst PD does not have to spend time on. Low range of flaks and high missile speeds means flak (without range upgrades) only gets a few shots in before the missiles impact. Sometimes only enough to kill 1-2 missiles out of a salvo of 12. Another note: Expanded Magazines dont do anything for weapons that dont have magazines, like the Light Needler you mentioned. It doesnt increase the burst fire capability, only the depth of the magazines (like on the Storm Needler).

Wait I don't believe the light needler or heavy needler benefits from extended mags since neither have magazines just a long refire delay storm needler is affected since it has a magazine. One other point of consideration is using integrated point defense with railguns and having perfect accuracy point defense with a decent range to deal with missiles and fighters before they get near you also just decent pressure for shields at long range as an added bonus.

In vanilla Starsector, there are only two ballistics weapons that don't suck: Vulcan cannons and Hyper Velocity Drivers. (This comment brought to you by the High-Tech gang.)

Helbore is way better than B, atleast mid A tier. It has the highers HE damage per shot which means it can quickly strip armor of heavy ships like onslaught or dominators, missiles and torpedoes arent as reliable, it also has low flux and ordinace points. you usualy dont need HE weapons after armor is striped so investing in something like Hepgiastus or HM is not worth it as they strip armor slower and cost more flux and OP.

Thank you for the video, excellent presentation. I simply can't imagine the flaks on A tier but, you made a strong case for them.

Playing a luddic church inspired game, weapons like the arbalest gain in OP what they lose in raw effectiveness. I ended up with escort fighters on every destroyer, and also picked up derelict operations to make my fleet replicable and for D mods to matter very little. Heavy Moarters and Arbelests did much more work then you might expect with the luddic horde I managed to amass.

Excellent presentation with clear visuals.

really looking forward to hear what you are going to say about energy weapons

Yet another banger

As Arbalest enjoyer I want to note just how dirt cheap it is to both equip and use. And it does outperform Heavy Autocannon in a few categories too. Considering how most low-tech ships have limited flux and abundant medium slots, Arbalests fits in pretty well in my opinion.

One of the great things about Starsector is that people can have vastly different opinions on specific weapons and yet make really strong arguments for said opinions at the same time. There are viable builds and situational uses for just about everything. Except HVD, that is. That being S-tier might be the only uncontroversial take here. 🤣

The only weapons i can see pairing with the hepthatus is the guass or the hypervelocity driver. But that generally leads to two types of expensive weapons being used together.

Are you planning on doing an analysis on mixed weapon sets? Like are there high tech options that have the range make the Haphestus a good pick?

Lil' note: I don't think expanded mags help with needlers. I think they only apply to weapons with 'ammo capacity' rather than 'burst size' From another needler aficionado

Ship speed is added to the projectile speed of any non-beam weapon, keep that in mind. A volley of Orion Driver and Hell Cannon turns Retribution from a melee fighter into a sniper. Literally, Hell Cannon projectiles fly a quarter of the entire battlefield, from one strategic point to another (like from a jamming point to a command point) at insane speeds. This also works with the Fury and Energy Blaster combo, but the result is not as impressive. You can also try this with Odyssey and Giga Cannon.

Mauler and HVD both have the same range of 1000, the HVD doesn't out range the Mauler they are both 1000 range weapons

actually doing God's work

IMO the Hephaestus shines on ships like the Manticore who want to harass the enemy with constant volleys at long range. my personal Manticore build was one Hephaestus with triple Railguns(or those Gauss guns from the Knights of Ludd mod) so you would sit at 900 distance from the enemy and would just keep dishing lead on them until the shield goes down and they start getting the anti armor hits. It's not supposed to be an artillery nor is it supposed to be a a short range machine gun. it's more like an assault rifle or the like, it's gonna have a fairly constant rate of fire for its distance.

when in doubt mount HVD

I generally.consider the Light Mortar mostly useless due to woeful accuracy. On small craft with low flux I'd rather fit for close-range point defense, give it light machine guns and/or vulcans and have it sweep. I feel the mark 9 was slightly underrated, though I can't be sure I'm ranking it in a vacuum, I always mount it alongside the hephaestos assault gun and as a pair they are excellent. That duo of large ballistics form the backbone of my ai-flown fleet. (Things like hyper velocity and railgun belong in player hands) Edit: oh wow, you really didn't like the Hag. I quite like it's extended range and rof, it's job is to force shields up early and hold them up so pressure can be applied by other weapons while punishing those who vent. Otherwise your extreme range shield pressure gets armour tanked. I mentioned using it with the mk ix, they are range matched so it's always the combo I deploy it in. I always aim to be delivering both damage sources in most range bands, shield pressure alone just lets them drop and vent

The way you go through the weapons is really bizarre. Because normally you would compare same size weapon that deals the same damage type, not different size weapon that have "same jobs". Like why are you talking about Hellbore vs 2 Maulers when they literally can't be mounted on the same slot? Doesn't it make more sense talking why use Hellbore instead of Assault Gun. Also, I'm sorry but Devastator flak is absolutely terrible for capital ship fight. Because the shell randomly explode (because it's supposed to be a flak cannon), the effective damage on max range is like 30% of the raw number.

Its worth noting that both the rail gun and gauss cannon seem to be affected by 'high energy focus' ship special

*Dakka Dakka!* Indeed

What a shitfest. Every weapon has its own niche, be it sustain or burst damage. Hephaestus is good now, Arbalest is a workhorse for ships with bad flux, HVD is really flux and OP-hungry but can punch armor alongside shields, and YOU PUT RAILGUN NEXT TO LIGHT MORTAR!!! The 100dmg shield and armor harasser next to the actual worst weapon in the game.

you are incompetent