Posted by: Gabethebaldandbold
« on: November 12, 2021, 06:34:38 PM »
For me Microwave only become a secondary consideration late into empire tech progression because of the range factor throw on top the fact their usefulness is very situational and they're just not something I'd ever consider as a primary use. Especially early-mid empire tech when many of your intended targets are likely going to be flooding you with AMMs at range then spamming you with hundreds of AMM per volley as you close in but still don't have any kind of energy weapon range, the time taken to close in just to disable something just isn't viable when you could just be killing them from further out without taking a lot more hits.
And those rare times when you are engaged with a enemy that isn't flooding you with thousands of missiles each engagement, they're typically going to be hitting you with longer range lasers and particles, and not something you really want to be letting get 2 or 3 free shots off whilst you close in even further to use Microwave weapons.
When I would start to consider Microwave weaponry is once I am considering deploying very large 40,000+ ton missile or laser military ships that I know will have the tech to dictate the situation of a fight, a couple of times I have made a variant of the main combat ships that can house a handful of very fast disposable Microwave only destroyers. The main fleet transits to the battle, then the 3-4k ton microwave destroyers launch and quickly charge toward the engaged enemy and focus on any secondary targets that my large combat ships are unable to concentrate fire on at the moment due to lack of additional fire control/weapons.
So far I've really only bothered to do it a handful of times when focusing on Missiles and gauss-PD where the main fleet is going to be engaging at some distance away and I know 1 or 2 twin gauss PD on the destroyers will help them cover each other from missiles using final fire whilst deployed. But due to the extremely restrictive fire control hard limit on laser distance by the time the main fleet got into range there would be little point having a deployable microwave ship over just closing the main fleet a little closer and deploying one additional 40,000+ ton ship in the fleet focused to the task.
Well I agree maybe not as a primary. I was being hyperbolic, but still, you dont need that much more tech than your enemies, if you have your ships be fast enough to dictate the range of your engagements, you can win consistently against enemies with much greater ranged weaponry. I usually go for it in the early-mid game, when I have my big ion engines with good speed modifiers, I can often get 8000 km/s on some ships, after that is just a matter of cramming enough shields and gauss cannons to endure the AMM storms (not nescessarily all in one go, just come in and hop out of range and you should be fine most of the time), and enough AMM to deal with their missiles, and then charging in. It does wonders for jump point warfare too, but you need to build around very agressive beam combat doctrines, which you may not find fun, and I suppose that is fine. but for close range beam fighting, its a must, and it makes you punch way above your weight class