| Heavy Blaster | |||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 |
 | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| General Information | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||
| Fires bolts of energy at enemy targets. With high damage and flux costs, the heavy blaster is one of the most damaging weapons for its size. A reliable energy weapon, the Heavy Blaster uses improved high-energy gas ammunition which, when activated by a strong electric current, is converted into plasma. A guiding electron is fired along the axis of traversal beforehand, ensuring that the uncontained plasma bolt will travel in the intended direction, thanks to physics that are no longer well understood. |
||
–In-Game Description | ||
The Heavy Blaster is a medium energy weapon. Its high per-shot damage is highly desirable against armor.
Notes[]
With exceptionally high DPS and flux cost for its size, the Heavy Blaster is best used when it is necessary to make one weapon mount do the work of three. It maxes flux levels in seconds if left on auto-fire; manual aiming may be preferred.
When outfitting a ship with a Heavy Blaster or multiple of them, Safety Overrides is highly recommended to account for its flux-hungry nature.
Heavy Blaster's method of operation on ships like Fury is that through Sabots. Without Sabots Heavy Blaster will most likely falter due to the fact that the flux disparity between the Fury and its victim is too small. Additionally whilst Heavy Blaster does do high damage. It doesn't do enough damage to go past heavy armour easily. Thus creating certain uncomfortable situation for its users.
Generally Heavy Blaster is considered a subpar weapon incapable of performing effectively on any ship except the ones altered by the Safety Overrides hullmod which has been recently described as overpowered by the community's consensus. Or at least a specific subsection of it operating on the Fractal Softworks forums. Discussions such as these took place. Therefore the situation of Heavy Blaster within the meta is uncertain.
Recently, newly added Kinetic Blaster seems to perform relatively better by actually giving High Tech ships the ability to trade damage with enemies. With there appearing builds of for example an SO Aurora utilising Kinetic Blaster and Ion Cannons to long-termly deprecate enemies. Without running into NPC intelligence issues related to incredibly high flux spending.
Additionally with the reworked Mining Blaster. The Heavy Blaster is replaced in terms of high damage against armor function. This does not apply to ships which do not have enough weapon mounts to equip multiple specialised weapons.
Heavy Blaster is heavily negated by a spam of Locust, Annihilators or even Swarmers. As its projectile will collide and disappear when coming into contact with said missiles. Thus wasting a 720 flux damaging package. The NPC is unable to tell when it is safe to fire the weapon so that it is not absorbed. Additionally due to the weapon's low turn rate, NPCs will often fire their weapon to the side. Poorly tracking the enemy. This can be partially negated using Advanced Turret Gyros.
Heavy Blaster's DPS nature whilst impressive on paper doesn't translate to actually being that high when put up against standard ballistic weapons. Though admittedly it is the highest of any non-large energy weapon. But significantly lower than that of Autopulse and far easier to counter than that of Plasma Cannon. A Heavy Autocannon will actually deal 418 damage against shields at far bigger range. Whilst incapable of dealing damage against armor. Ballistic weapons users usually have a greater access to missiles for a smaller amount of DP. Such as the Eradicator and Dominator in comparison to Fury and Aurora. With additional mobility being gained by those ships being heavily negated by lacklustre range or durability.
However, the reason why Heavy Blaster's damage actually appears so high is because its universal damaging nature translates it into being able to deal damage at any point in time. Without it being negated in any way. Especially when colluding with another energy weapon which also does the same. 2 energy weapons actually have value of 4 ballistic weapons. Not including certain design concessions to make this concept work. Due to this fact.
On a ship like Fury, it's possible to pair the Heavy Blaster with 2 IR Pulse Lasers. The IR Pulse Lasers will provide mild shield pressure and damage to destroyed armor. When doing this, a PCL can be mounted on the frontal hardpoint to destroy incoming missiles to allow the Heavy Blaster to actually go through and deal damage. And the Synergy slot can be used for a Sabot Pod. However recently the PCL has been nerfed in order to balance fairly established in the meta Low Tech ships that have access to far more missile mounts than their High Tech counterparts.
Heavy Blaster's damage becomes understandably lethal when paired with High Energy Focus. However most High Energy Focus users such as Sunder or Champion are too slow, vulnerable and underfluxed to use it with its limited range. Especially considering the fact that such ships tend to have very poor shield stats to compensate for their mobility or high flux capacity and venting. The exception to this are the [REDACTED] ships of Tri-Tachyon kind. Which utilise Energy Bolt Coherer to make up for the Heavy Blaster's weaknesses. With [REDACTED] Tri-Tachyon Destroyer having access to High Energy Focus along two medium missile launchers which allow it to be pretty much unbeatable on its DP dimension.
However the nature of [REDACTED] ships is that they are nigh impossible to acquire in the early stages of the game due to the skill needed for that being available in the highest Technology tier. Additionally these ships are locked to Reckless behaviour making it very difficult for them to be integrated into average human fleets.
Another class of ships are the LG ships. Which have a human version of Bolt Coherer which is significantly weaker than its [REDACTED] counterpart. These ships additionally suffer from various cons. Such as for example having a hullmod that reduces their flux venting. Which has to be repaired, doubling the cost of a ship upon its acquisition. Additionally LG ships cannot be bought on any market with the exception of the Executor which is too underfluxed to use a Heavy Blaster anyway.
When using Heavy Blaster. Besides Safety Overrides. Make sure to use Stabilized Shields, Flux Regulation and Energy Weapon Mastery+ to be able to fire it. Though note that ships like the Shrike or Fury don't actually have enough OP to easily install Stabilized Shields. That hullmod however can be built-in using the s-mod mechanic. And should be under normal circumstances.
Ordnance Expertise can also be used to increase Heavy Blaster's long-term damage potential. But this skill has been significantly nerfed in recent time. Causing it to grant far less flux. Which is also way too little considering the fact that High Tech ships don't actually spend that much OP on their arsenal compared to their Low Tech or Midline equivalents.
Though Heavy Blaster has limited range of only 600 units. Installing Integrated Targeting Unit on destroyers or cruisers to use it. Or equipping officers with Gunnery Implants is still recommended. As any range loss will make it difficult for the ship to commit into an attack. This is negated in Safety Overrides builds where base speed is high enough to allow the ships to basically ignore all laws of Starsector's mobility in favour of being able to just bomb the enemy with endless projectiles. For the same reason it's possible to ignore the viability of Unstable Injector. Though ships like Shrike or Fury do benefit quite a lot from it. And thus it is recommended to s-mod this hullmod in spite of the most recent statement.
Animation[]
At least two versions out of date. Last verified for version 0.8a-RC19. Please refer to Version History and update this page.