help: tell me about weapons

[grandadmiralbob]

hello, im a complete noob to the game. i have finally wiped out the humans on my first game, where i know what im going. i would like ANY and ALL info on the differences between ALL weapon CATEGORIES and SUBCATEGORIES.
to make it easy, and feel free to add if i forget anything about what you know about, the strategic advantage, some useful info or ANYHING about

1.energy weapons
2.torpedoes
3.missiles
4.kinetic weapons
5.PD's
6. planetary assault weapons
7. mounting the said weapons
8.strike craft differientiations from normal
9. ANYTHING else

the explanations have confused/helped me in understanding the game so any info would be greatly appreciated. also, i know that, eg. energy weapons, have heavy, medium, and small turret mounts, but im not sure of the difference between say, a leviathan with 10 lancer lasers or 30 xray laser to please share your info w/ me and the others and as always, thanks in advance for the info.

 

[D Inqu]

For general info go to the game wiki:
http://sots2.rorschach.net/Tactical_Combat

If you have specific questions, feel free to ask here.

 

[roman566]

Be advised as this information is very subjective. I didn't use most of those technologies in my ships and only saw then in action when used against me (I also often check AI tech tree to see how it looks like).
1. Energy Weapons :
-short range
-large damage
-some of them are instantaneous, thus have high accuracy
-requires large amount of research to be effective
-no supply required
-can be deflected by armor
My opinion - other than for PD purposes I don't use them.
2.Torpedoes
-medium range
-requires small amount of supply
-can be shot down
-requires small to average amount of research
My opinion - good secondary weapon for command section
3.Missiles
-medium to VERY VERY long range (longer than anti-planetary siege driver)
-can be shot down
-requires supply
-damage can be upgraded by research without replacing weapons
-very versatile (there are missiles creating lasers or beams when detonating, missiles firing projectiles after detonation, missiles creating damaging cloud of ... stuff)
-requires little research to be very effective (assuming you have dreadnaught technology to use heavy IOBM)
My opinion - my favorite weapon in sots2. Heavy IOBM clears planet in several salvos without much damage to infrastructure or hazard rating. With range and speed advantage you can take out almost everyone NOT armed with missiles.
4.Kinetic weapons
-large versatility
-small to long range (with VERY long range for Siege Driver, but I don't recommend it as anti-ship weapon)
-requires supply
-varying accuracy
-average to large amount of research required
-can be deflected by armor
My opinion - don't bother with those, good ones require large amount of research and rest isn't very good.
5. PD - anti missile/drone weapons

Rapid Pulse PD Laser - General usage, light damage, high rate of fire, high accuracy, best vs missiles.
Phalanx PD - General usage, heavier damage, high rate of fire, average accuracy, best vs heavier, slower targets.
PD Phaser - Intensive usage, heavy damage, lower rate of fire, perfect accuracy, best in large numbers vs missiles or drones, easily overwhelmed by heavy tracking ordinance.
Interceptor Missile - Anti heavy ordinance, high damage, mid rate of fire, tracking, best vs heavy missiles and torpedoes, more easily overwhelmed by masses light tracking weapons or spoofing conditions.

As you can see PD are either kinetic, missile or energy based. In energy tree there are also Variable Laser and Variable Phaser which can work as both PD weapon and general anti ship weapon.
My opinion - my standard design has all light slots spent on point defense weapons. I even used medium slots on Leviathans for variable lasers (Hiver leviathans lack light weapon slots).
6. Planetary assault weapons
Don't bother with those, normal weapons can deal with planets AND enemy ships which are main obstacle. I will list those, but as I don't use them this might not be complete list
-assault shuttles - flies to planet and does some damage, can be shot down
-bio missiles- depending on your biotechnology missiles you can infect planet with some sort of plague, be aware that your enemy can have vaccine and one race is immune all plagues excluding Xombie (to which there is also no vaccine). Missiles can be shot down.
7. There is probably video guide for that, I'm not very good in explaining such things.
8. if by strike craft you mean Battle Riders then they are destroyer sized ships (1/3 size of cruiser) that behave almost like today aircraft, they have to be carried into battle by special designed ships (carriers) or can be based on land (Space Hangars, Stealthed Structures). You build carrier and riders separately. Advantages are that you can improve your weaponry by improving riders and having same carriers, disadvantage is that without it's riders carriers loose about 50% of their firepower. (Not true for leviathans which are so big that standard one carry some riders on board)
9. Here you have all technologies listed along with all weapons that they provide http://sots2.rorschach.net/SotS2_Codex With weapons you can see their exact detail like damage, range, supply, crew and power requirements and many many more.

 

[D Inqu]

Roman, you wrote a lot of things which are not correct, mainly due to the odd grouping of weapons given by the initial poster. It also seems you have very little experience with different weapons.

1. Energy weapons
Are not deflected by armor except the weak small mount pulse lasers
Are longer ranged than kinetics
Don't need supply, but need energy.
Overall much much more than "just PD". In fact, for heavily armoured ships (levis with adamantine or intangibility) they are some of the best weapons.

2. Torpedoes
Very very different kinds of torps:
standard line has long range and is very powerful but can be shot down
disruptor line can lock out ship systems (goes amazingly well with strafe of lancer sections). Can't be shot down.
photonic like which bypasses shields and can't be shot down.

3. Missiles.
Good staring weapons. Good against the current state of the AI. Useless from mid game against people or once AI is fixed due to:
Subversion (turns your missiles on you)
Electronic warfare DN sections.
Dedicated PD ships

4. Kinetics
Upgrade greatly with tech without upgrading weapon (VRF + Acceleration amp + neutoruim)
Highest DPS with upgrades.
No or little terraforming damage to planets (which is good when you want them)

 

[roman566]

As I said in beginning everything I wrote is subjective, only kinetic weapon I ever user are point defense and impactors and Impactor HAVE loner range than energy weapons. Same goes for torpedo, I know that there are two types of them, but as the second type is not used by either me or AI I fought I can hardly say anything about it. As for missiles I doubt PD will ever be able to win with pure missile based ships, you can have more missiles than PD and there is ECCM module to deal with enemy ECM. And while subversion might be effective you have to get it... I'm yet to obtain this thing in my games. As for dedicated PD ships they might be good... but provide little to none firepower and still can be destroyed by sheer volume of fire (and forget about AI building those).
And for mistakes... kinetics deal MOST damage to planets, impactor 15, siege driver 50.... so not only I make mistakes.

 

[D Inqu]

Impactors are late tech special mount. Same for siege driver. They are unusual among most kinetics in that they do lots of terra damage and have long range (which is why I dont use impactors on planets normally). Regular turret based kinetics are the opposite. Their range is hardly bigger than energy, but unlike energy they will kill off population "cleanly".

Torpedoes - there are not 2, but like 3.5 types. Conventional torps - long range damage (with a AoE variant). The EMP torps can shorten out turrets and late tech ones engines too - critical advantage in combat. Finally the burst 4 torps ignore kinetic shields, then all shields, and finally (for meson torps) all shields and armor - amazing at killing levis with cruiser hunting packs. There are also special other types like kelvinic torps.

PD. Loa start with built in subversion and a almost 100% chance at phaser PD. You would have a lot of fun using missiles against them (discounting AI stupidity). Tarkas and morrigi almost always have subversion in their trees (morrigi also with phaser PD). Dedicated PD more than compensate for their lack of damage by greatly reducing the damage of a missile heavy opponent.
So missile spam is good. But only in single player and only with current AI shortcomings.

 

[Varcel]

Regarding variable lasers, do they automatically engage missiles, or do you have to change their targeting to the PD role to get them to target missiles?

 

[D Inqu]

Regarding variable lasers, do they automatically engage missiles, or do you have to change their targeting to the PD role to get them to target missiles?

they are supposed to engage missiles and drones automatically with standard targeting and automatically attack bigger ships if there are no missiles and drones. There used to be glitches in older versions, but as far as I know they were fixed.

 

[grandadmiralbob]

@ d inqu.........what do u mean wierd grouping?

@ d inqu & roman, you confuse me even more so......

to simplify, what are advantages/disadvantages of

1.torp.
2.energy
3.missiles
4.kinetic

all i know is missiles have waaaay longer range and dont require to be retro'ed
energy can be anti ship or pd, but they also have large(heavy cannons) medium (cannons) and small (laser) mounts, but i dont know the difference. im loving lancers and antimatter cannons
kinetic seems kinda blah, but i dont know much about them
and torpedoes have a couple different types but the explanation does give enough info, and some of the graphs are so close its hard to tell, and its kinda counter intuitive

basically, im like a kid at a candy store and see all of these weapons and all i do it think "i want that i want that i want that i want that......." and basically want some semi detailed experiences from the players that mr. rorsch's wiki doesnt answer, but i will give it a read

oh, and do weapons depend on race, ive only played at tarkas in my current game, but ive heard that sections loadouts/section types etc. are race dependent, sorry if ur confused and thanks for answering

 

[Solpel]

how many and what type of turrets or special weapons are on various sections IS race specific, as is amount of armor, structure, speed, turning, etc. Weapons themselves though are the same for all races, barring a few special weapons that are specific to certain races(morrigi grav cannon, Human Node maw, Zuul Node cannon, etc).

for simple terms, energy and ballistics are two sides of the same coin, they're similar in just as many ways as their different, some races have better chances at ballistics, some are better with energy, in the end no one is better per say then the other it's all in how you use them and what the great sadorandomizer deems you should have access to. These are generally your two primary weapon tree's. Like missiles, there are some counters, and anti-counters to them, though not as many as missiles and they tend to be fairly high level tech's. These tend to be your mid and close range options.

Torpedo's.. standard tracking torpedo's(fusion, antimatter, etc) are long range(not quite as far as missiles but close enough), tracking, tough to take down and do HUGE amounts of damage that will shred cruisers with even small volleys, and blow massive chunks of armor off even a leviathan. There are a few minor variations like enveloping, detonating and now the new burst torpedo's. Then there's the non tracking side which has your gluonic's, phontonic's(and a new tracking version), mesonic's etc, they tend to be decent damage but each has something unique that they do, gluonic for example are able to bypass deflectors and energy absorbers, something that would normally effect all the other torp's. Then you have ones like mesonic's which are basically an armor piercing torpedo, it currently has an armor penetration of 10, meaning there is no ship armor it can't pierce deeply, including a leviathan, it also has the benefit of bypassing any form of shielding except meson shields. Most of these types of things you can see in the description of the tech and in combination with some of the data on the wiki(which includes damage patterns which will someday make their way into being viewable in game). The middle line as mentioned are straight forward EMP type torps, meant to shut ships down, some are non tracking, some are tracking. The tracking torps while tougher do still have issues with heavy amounts of PD like missiles.

Missiles especially for races with lots of medium turrets are great standoff weapons, however they have to deal with PD, so mid game they tend to lose a lot of effectiveness(currently the AI is having difficulties adapting properly to counter this). At that point to be still somewhat effective they need massive numbers, or some of the off shoot non standard missiles, like blast beams, polaris heavy ship missiles, MIRV's, etc to try and help combat some of the PD, but like torps, they are either specialized mounts or need at least a large turret(compared to a normal missiles medium mount). While they do automatically upgrade with antimatter and reflex warheads, they're damage is not comparable to a torpedo of course, however a fleet without PD will generally get slaughtered by even fusion missiles. There's also a new counter with the new expansion, subversion, it gives roughly a 50% chance to turn your missiles back on you, and effects all missiles except the new jaeger missiles from cybernetic's tree(the dog brain missiles ). Currently once the enemy has that tech, all their cruiser and larger ships get it as a passive and it is a rather powerful missile counter.(right now there's also an issue with those returning missiles not getting targeted properly by your own PD)

 

[D Inqu]

Perfect summary. If someone needs more info they could just go on the wiki.

Just a small note regarding subversion - remember that Loa start with a slightly weaker version subversion built in from turn 1.

 

[Varcel]

they are supposed to engage missiles and drones automatically with standard targeting and automatically attack bigger ships if there are no missiles and drones. There used to be glitches in older versions, but as far as I know they were fixed.

Thanks. I'll have to try it in combat. Wasn't working as I expected in the weapon test area, but then that's hardly new.

 

[grandadmiralbob]

I dont want to know everything, as learning a new game is fun. but what i do wanna know, take the energy weapons for example, is what they are meant to do, strategically.
energy weapons have
1. beamers, which link to phasors, i think
2. lancers, cutters i think
3. antimatter/fusion/plasma cannon
4. heavy am/fusion/plasma cannon
5. antimatter/fusion/plasma projectors

if im missing any let me know, i just wanna know what they are supposed to do.

 

[Ulzgoroth]

I dont want to know everything, as learning a new game is fun. but what i do wanna know, take the energy weapons for example, is what they are meant to do, strategically.
energy weapons have
1. beamers, which link to phasors, i think
2. lancers, cutters i think
3. antimatter/fusion/plasma cannon
4. heavy am/fusion/plasma cannon
5. antimatter/fusion/plasma projectors

if im missing any let me know, i just wanna know what they are supposed to do.

Beamers and phasers (and heavy turret beam weapons) have perfect accuracy. So long as the turret can traverse fast enough to track the target (a problem for heavy mounts, especially) they never miss. They also share certain bonuses. They tend to have deep and narrow damage profiles. I think beamers don't hit as hard as regular lasers, but perfect accuracy sometimes helps a lot, especially against small targets. beamers and phasers don't have a lot of range, but phasers are fully effective at their maximum range, which does help a bit.

HCL/Lancer/Cutting Beam are used primarily in fixed-forward mounts on cruiser and dreadnought sized ships. Like other beams they technically have perfect accuracy, but they have extremely limited traversal so it can be difficult to bring them to bear on anything that isn't slow and large. So they're primarily useful for giving a ship heavy forward firepower to punch into large targets. They also appear on a number of ship sections which you want for reasons other than the fixed beams, like Battle Bridge (good for big turrets), Assault (torpedoes from a command section) and barrage (often-useful mixed arsenal). Zuul (Horde and Prester) use special mountings with somewhat wider traversal.

Plasma/fusion/AM cannon are relatively short ranged medium mount weapons with pretty high power, wide damage templates, and not-so-great accuracy. Sort of the energy counterpart to mass drivers. The obvious go-to for an energy-weapon race wanting to shred enemy ships with their medium guns. Like mass drivers, they're a bit lacking against targets with a lot of damage-reduction layers. Notable: their damage drops off badly if they're too close to the enemy.

Heavy plasma/fusion/AM cannon are heavy mount weapons have a somewhat different approach from the smaller version. They've got the same sort of damage profiles, but they fire accurately over much longer ranges.

Projectors take the form of an enormous mounting which requires a specialized section. You get one on a cruiser mission section with very little else, or a few on a dreadnought. They spew a huge blast of 30 shots similar to the basic cannon, though a bit less powerful. In SotS 1, they were good for hammering on dreadnoughts because with such a big target, most of the blast would actually hit. (Though they could also crumple cruisers in a single blast sometimes.) With the damage reduction layers in SotS 2, the plasma and fusion models will lose a lot of their punch against a dreadnought, though the AM looks okay.


You're missing the polarized plasmatics line (armor piercing, limited diversity, weird damage profiles, branch from fusion cannon) and the emitters and tempest weapons. And the meson projector, but that's an oddball. And there's inertial guns, not sure which tree they're in, I've never used those.

 

[grandadmiralbob]

Beamers and phasers (and heavy turret beam weapons) have perfect accuracy. So long as the turret can traverse fast enough to track the target (a problem for heavy mounts, especially) they never miss. They also share certain bonuses. They tend to have deep and narrow damage profiles. I think beamers don't hit as hard as regular lasers, but perfect accuracy sometimes helps a lot, especially against small targets. beamers and phasers don't have a lot of range, but phasers are fully effective at their maximum range, which does help a bit.

HCL/Lancer/Cutting Beam are used primarily in fixed-forward mounts on cruiser and dreadnought sized ships. Like other beams they technically have perfect accuracy, but they have extremely limited traversal so it can be difficult to bring them to bear on anything that isn't slow and large. So they're primarily useful for giving a ship heavy forward firepower to punch into large targets. They also appear on a number of ship sections which you want for reasons other than the fixed beams, like Battle Bridge (good for big turrets), Assault (torpedoes from a command section) and barrage (often-useful mixed arsenal). Zuul (Horde and Prester) use special mountings with somewhat wider traversal.

Plasma/fusion/AM cannon are relatively short ranged medium mount weapons with pretty high power, wide damage templates, and not-so-great accuracy. Sort of the energy counterpart to mass drivers. The obvious go-to for an energy-weapon race wanting to shred enemy ships with their medium guns. Like mass drivers, they're a bit lacking against targets with a lot of damage-reduction layers. Notable: their damage drops off badly if they're too close to the enemy.

Heavy plasma/fusion/AM cannon are heavy mount weapons have a somewhat different approach from the smaller version. They've got the same sort of damage profiles, but they fire accurately over much longer ranges.

Projectors take the form of an enormous mounting which requires a specialized section. You get one on a cruiser mission section with very little else, or a few on a dreadnought. They spew a huge blast of 30 shots similar to the basic cannon, though a bit less powerful. In SotS 1, they were good for hammering on dreadnoughts because with such a big target, most of the blast would actually hit. (Though they could also crumple cruisers in a single blast sometimes.) With the damage reduction layers in SotS 2, the plasma and fusion models will lose a lot of their punch against a dreadnought, though the AM looks okay.


You're missing the polarized plasmatics line (armor piercing, limited diversity, weird damage profiles, branch from fusion cannon) and the emitters and tempest weapons. And the meson projector, but that's an oddball. And there's inertial guns, not sure which tree they're in, I've never used those.

I LIKE THAT EXPLANATION!!! thanks for the info, but i dunno what "polarized plasmatics" are. im playin tarka and theyre the only race ive played as where i know what im doing, so maybe they dont have em or maybe my feasability failed.

.........beamers are heavy weapons???
oh and what about regular lasers, whats thier purpose?

 

[Ulzgoroth]

I LIKE THAT EXPLANATION!!! thanks for the info, but i dunno what "polarized plasmatics" are. im playin tarka and theyre the only race ive played as where i know what im doing, so maybe they dont have em or maybe my feasability failed.

They link from fusion cannon and are available to all races, but not guaranteed feasible unless you're Loa.

.........beamers are heavy weapons???

Beamers aren't heavy weapons, they're light, though of course if you choose you can put them on heavy turrets. Particle beams are heavy weapons.

oh and what about regular lasers, whats thier purpose?

Pew Pew?

Seriously, I'm not really sure. They've got more range and maybe more DPS than beamers. They also have deeper damage templates, at least sometimes. I'd use them when trying to damage cruisers or (if desperate) anything larger with light mounts, provided I couldn't use war quoits instead. They also have important tech linkages, like phasers and PD lasers. Pulse phasers are still somewhat awesome, though they're only good against really heavy armor at close range.

 

[D Inqu]

Regarding beamers and lasers - they are countered easily by reflective coating. Improved reflective coating makes them all but useless. Phasers are not affected by reflective coating.
Pulse lasers are better then beamers in mid game, as they can still do some damage when beamers become useless. Pulse lasers also gave longer range.

 

[grandadmiralbob]

I'm apologize for being a dip#@#!, but the more questions you guys answer, i get 2 more that pop up.
1. when it comes to defensive "stuff", all i know is, reflective coating causes little lasers *beamers,green-xray* to become less and less effective. PD shoots down missles and strike craft. magneto ceramic lattices and the polysicicate alloys stop all weapons and energy weapons respectively. the disrupters and deflectors stop stuff, but ihave to read their discription to remember. but other than are there any other counter measures?
2. Torpedoes
A. what do they do in general?
b range compared to other classes?
c how are they deflected?
d range/damage compared to other weapons?
e damage compared to others and fire rate?
f what types of ships(or planets) are they good against?
g other useful in game info about them would be appreciated

 

[Ulzgoroth]

I'm apologize for being a dip#@#!, but the more questions you guys answer, i get 2 more that pop up.
1. when it comes to defensive "stuff", all i know is, reflective coating causes little lasers *beamers,green-xray* to become less and less effective. PD shoots down missles and strike craft. magneto ceramic lattices and the polysicicate alloys stop all weapons and energy weapons respectively. the disrupters and deflectors stop stuff, but ihave to read their discription to remember. but other than are there any other counter measures?

Uh, no to the bold bit. Polysilicates, magnetoceramics, and the subsequent quark resonators increase the armor grid thickness and increase the chance of ballistic weapons bouncing off. Adamantite Alloys, the top of that series, gives the highest chance of ballistics bouncing and an extra damage reduction line, I don't know if it also gives a thicker armor grid.

There's actual shields, which form a bubble around the ship that can take a certain amount of damage of any kind before dropping, and recharge. There's also shield variants (gravetic and meson) which basically act like full-coverage deflectors and disruptors respectively. There's a hardened electronics upgrade that protects against...probably disruptor torps, tempest weapons, and EMP drones, and might reduce emitter damage. There's a few techs that increase resistance to enemy boarding attacks. There's cloaking, which does what it sounds like, and can be modified to insubstantiality, which does what it sounds like but only for short bursts.

And energy absorbers, which significantly reduce damage taken from energy weapons (I think) and speed up reloading of your energy weapons when you get hit with energy weapons. Great stuff.

That's...all I can think of. In general, anyway. The Liir have drive techs that make their FTL ships sometimes 'not there' for enemy fire and, if you're lucky, a tech that gives all Liir ships (but again not Prester Zuul ones, I think) an extra damage reduction layer.

2. Torpedoes
A. what do they do in general?
b range compared to other classes?
c how are they deflected?
d range/damage compared to other weapons?
e damage compared to others and fire rate?
f what types of ships(or planets) are they good against?
g other useful in game info about them would be appreciated

They're a few different things. The generic ones (Fusion, AM) are your stereotypical SF huge ball of plasma that chases its target. They do the most damage at maximum range, and it's a lot of damage and more range than just about all non-guided weapons. They're vulnerable to PD, but don't just die like missiles, they shrink and lose power as they soak up damage. It takes some firepower to stop a torpedo, laser PD is usually not preferred. There are some variants on the theme (detonating, enveloping, burst).

There's the photonic series, which are (primarily) unguided and fired in bursts. They still have long range, though their damage is bet up close and without tracking they can have some trouble hitting due to travel time. They move faster than generic torpedoes, and can't be stopped by PD. The main line of advanced photonics gain the ability to bypass most defensive technology. There are some odd alternatives, like a guided version and a torpedo that is supposed to increase the damage the target takes from other weapons.

Then there's the EM line. They include unguided and guided options, and their main feature is that they disrupt the functioning of the target. They can reset weapon loading and the advanced ones can (I think) totally disable a ship briefly.

I think they're all stopped by deflectors? Not sure. Generally, torpedoes (like other bigger weapons) fire relatively slowly.

As heavy ordinance with strong and penetrating damage, torpedoes are mostly recommended against...pretty much any enemy warship that can't fend them off. I wouldn't shoot them at BRs, usually, but it might work out... The EM ones are supposed to be super effective against Loa and AI Fire Control. Most torpedoes are preferably used from outside your enemy's effective weapon range. Non-tracking ones can benefit from being closer, but your ship has to be able to get the torpedo tubes to bear on the enemy and they aren't turrets.

 

[grandadmiralbob]

Uh, no to the bold bit. Polysilicates, magnetoceramics, and the subsequent quark resonators increase the armor grid thickness and increase the chance of ballistic weapons bouncing off. Adamantite Alloys, the top of that series, gives the highest chance of ballistics bouncing and an extra damage reduction line, I don't know if it also gives a thicker armor grid.

There's actual shields, which form a bubble around the ship that can take a certain amount of damage of any kind before dropping, and recharge. There's also shield variants (gravetic and meson) which basically act like full-coverage deflectors and disruptors respectively. There's a hardened electronics upgrade that protects against...probably disruptor torps, tempest weapons, and EMP drones, and might reduce emitter damage. There's a few techs that increase resistance to enemy boarding attacks. There's cloaking, which does what it sounds like, and can be modified to insubstantiality, which does what it sounds like but only for short bursts.

And energy absorbers, which significantly reduce damage taken from energy weapons (I think) and speed up reloading of your energy weapons when you get hit with energy weapons. Great stuff.

That's...all I can think of. In general, anyway. The Liir have drive techs that make their FTL ships sometimes 'not there' for enemy fire and, if you're lucky, a tech that gives all Liir ships (but again not Prester Zuul ones, I think) an extra damage reduction layer.

They're a few different things. The generic ones (Fusion, AM) are your stereotypical SF huge ball of plasma that chases its target. They do the most damage at maximum range, and it's a lot of damage and more range than just about all non-guided weapons. They're vulnerable to PD, but don't just die like missiles, they shrink and lose power as they soak up damage. It takes some firepower to stop a torpedo, laser PD is usually not preferred. There are some variants on the theme (detonating, enveloping, burst).

There's the photonic series, which are (primarily) unguided and fired in bursts. They still have long range, though their damage is bet up close and without tracking they can have some trouble hitting due to travel time. They move faster than generic torpedoes, and can't be stopped by PD. The main line of advanced photonics gain the ability to bypass most defensive technology. There are some odd alternatives, like a guided version and a torpedo that is supposed to increase the damage the target takes from other weapons.

Then there's the EM line. They include unguided and guided options, and their main feature is that they disrupt the functioning of the target. They can reset weapon loading and the advanced ones can (I think) totally disable a ship briefly.

I think they're all stopped by deflectors? Not sure. Generally, torpedoes (like other bigger weapons) fire relatively slowly.

As heavy ordinance with strong and penetrating damage, torpedoes are mostly recommended against...pretty much any enemy warship that can't fend them off. I wouldn't shoot them at BRs, usually, but it might work out... The EM ones are supposed to be super effective against Loa and AI Fire Control. Most torpedoes are preferably used from outside your enemy's effective weapon range. Non-tracking ones can benefit from being closer, but your ship has to be able to get the torpedo tubes to bear on the enemy and they aren't turrets.

whew!!!
good explaination on defenses, makes sense.
so torpedoes are like biggers slower firing missles, that either do heavy damage, or trade off for stopping ship function, or piercing shields...... correct me if im wrong?

next question............. same as above, but missles
i know they have the longest range, are countered by PD. i dunno if anti ballistic stuff counters them or not.......so please explain. i think they also have perfect or near perfect accuracy.
to me, missle tech seems boring. they have missle, bigger missile, biggest missile, and missle that shoots lasers. that seems to be it with missiles, as far as i know.
kinetics.....same question since theres not really alot of options with missiles
from what ive noticed, have shortest range, almost perfect accuracy, and do heavy damage. the also have variations that "knock" units around and other rounds that have an AoE damage. one think i dont quite understand is the difference between regular, AP, and HEAP rounds. whats their use?
and as always, if theres any other important things i left out please let me know.