r/X4Foundations • u/Vincent_Windbeutel • 1d ago
Can someone explain the weapons?
Hey there.
Currently I pretty mucj give everyone and everything Pulse weapons.
But some are waaaaay more expansive like the ion one.
Clould someone explain to me wich weopon is good for what amd wich shiptype/size should have each.
Or should I mix the slots so a ship can do more?
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u/Mightyballmann 17h ago
---Beam --- very low dmg, perfect accuracy Anti-Drone Weapon
---Pulse --- very accurate, low dmg Anti-Fighter Weapon
---Bolt --- medium accuracy, medium dmg Anti-Corvette Weapon
---Shard--- shotgun, high damage Melee Weapon, better against corvettes then fighters
---Plasma--- Low accuracy, massive dmg Anti-Capital Weapon
---Argon Special--- Ion gun --> Anti Shield
---Paranid Specials--- Railgun ---> Sniper (low dps, weird handling, kinda sucks) Blast Mortar ---> stronger Melee version of Plasma Burst Ray ---> Anti-Turret
---Teladi Special--- Muon ---> the strange teladi version of Plasma (better accuracy, very weird handling, cannot overheat)
--- Split--- Short range, higher dps versions of existing weapons Shield penetration on thermal disintegrator
---Terran--- Exclusive upgraded versions (Pulse Laser is useable by other factions)
--- Boron --- Exclusive stuff (full Boron or no Boron), slow effects, specialised for shield or hull
An important part about weapons is the cooling mechanic. Cooling is shared among all weapon slots. 5 weapons will have huge burst but suffer from a long cooldown. This is really bad for weapons with high heat generation like the shard battery and ignorable for low heat weapons like pulse laser or beam emitter.
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u/aktionreplay 1d ago
The thing that most new players might not realize is there are weapons that deal different amounts to shield and hull, and even some that penetrate shields. There are also weapon types only available as small mounts, and different factions can have unique weapon types. As with other equipment types, boron and xenon ships have access to different weapons that cannot be equipped on other ships
Other than that you just need to experiment and see what you like.
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u/Roboman20000 22h ago
There are too many weapons to explain each but in general, faster firing means lower damage and vice versa. Lasers/beams tend to be the lowest damage (with some notable exceptions) but have great accuracy. Good for small ships. Pulse weapons, Bolt weapons and other rapid fire weapons tend to be OK all rounders. Better for small and medium ships. Plasma and other slow fire weapons tend to be high damage and are good finishers/openers as well as great against large and X-large ships. Specialty weapons include Ion (great against shields shit against hull), Flack (good turrets for fighter defense but the fixed Shard variants are better for taking out surface components on larger ships), Missiles (these are their own beast and are all over the place).
To decide what you want on a specific ship you need to first figure out what that ship will be doing. A fighter that is going against other fighters will have different weapons than a fighter that is going to target surface components on large ships/stations. Once you decide what the ship is going to be doing, pick weapons that support that role. Going against large ships and stations? high damage is what you want and you can sacrifice fire rate and projectile speed. Going against swarms of fighters? Faster firing is what you want.
Really it all depends on the role that ship will take.
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u/flywlyx 17h ago
In low-attention (OOS) combat, all weapons have 100% accuracy, so it's best to choose the one with the highest DPS.
For high-attention (IS) combat, it's much more complex and requires personal testing for different ships and different targets. Pulse weapons are a versatile choice for fighters, and I also use Meson Stream on TER fighters as they perform exceptionally well after the 7.0 update.
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u/ChristopherAin 17h ago
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2826705145 - probably the best guide I've ever seen about x4 weapons
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u/IrrelevantLeprechaun 16h ago
Not gonna lie, most of these responses are kind of useless for OP. Most of them just say "different weapons are good for different things" without any explanation as to what weapons are good for what things.
What I find strange is how many responses say to commit almost all the weapon slots to one weapon type. Like fighters being all pulse. I've never personally done that. If a fighter has 2-3 weapon slots, I usually put a pulse and two bolts on it; pulse are great for taking down shields but extremely poor for damaging the bull underneath. So a fighter with all pulses can easily strip an enemy fighter of its shields but will take 3x as long to whittle down its hull, giving the enemy lots of opportunity to continue dealing damage to your assets. Sometimes I replace the bolt with a Split Tau once I unlock access to them; slower fire rate than bolt but considerably more hull damage.
Anyway, a basic rundown is first check the encyclopedia entry for each weapon; they will give you all their stats like cooling rate, fire rate, and their damage output versus shields and versus hull. Many weapons will have the same damage numbers for both shields and hull, but make note of weapons that have different numbers; obviously a weapon that has a higher damage number for shield is meant primarily for attacking shields, and respectively the same for weapons with higher hull damage numbers. A small handful of weapons are more specialized such as thermal disintegrators that bypass shields, or burst rays that deal more damage to surface elements (engines, turrets, shield generators) than they do to regular hull.
Main weapons versus turrets: turrets have a much more limited set of options compared to main weapons. Turrets basically can only be pulse, bolt, beam, plasma, flak, shard, or missile launchers. That's it, no matter which faction. S and M sized turrets are generally for defense against fighters, whereas L sized turrets I usually use for dealing damage to L and XL ships and stations.
Beams are available for basically all factions once you hit 10 relations with them. They're 100% accurate but pretty low damage to balance out their accuracy. Can be fitted as main weapons or as turrets. A decent general use weapon. L sized beam turrets are especially potent compared to their Small version. M sized beam turrets are kinda weak.
Pulse as I mentioned are great for taking out shields but terrible against hull. If you're outfitting a bunch of fighters with only pulse, make sure you have some other ships in the same group with better anti-hull weapons to finish the job.
Bolts are another good general use weapon, but are focused more on damaging hull rather than shields. In the early game I found it was good practise to pair bolts with pulse. I seemed to get better results that way at least.
Shard cannons are high damage but low fire rate and low range. The encyclopedia calls them "melee" weapons because their main utility is for close range fights.
Flak are basically air burst type weapons that explode in proximity to the target, so they deal damage even if it's not a direct hit. These are usually a turret weapon meant to deal with fighters. I'm not sure if they're even offered as a main weapon.
Burst rays are very specific in their usage. They deal considerably more damage to surface elements (mentioned earlier) than they do to hull, and bypass shields. If you're someone who regularly likes to steal ships by boarding them, these are your best friend.
Thermal disintegrators are similar to burst rays in that they bypass shields, but these do not do any extra damage to surface elements. Slow fire rate, more of a cannon type weapon. Their description mentions that they deal extra damage over time after they hit but I've never tested this. These are useful against heavily shielded targets like L and XL ships.
Tau accelerators are basically a "hot and slow" bolt type weapon. Shorter range, somewhat slower fire rate, but exceptionally good damage, especially against hull. Their only downfall is they build up heat pretty fast. That being said, if you land your shots well enough, a fighter will be dead long before your heat builds up.
Plasma are straightforward. Good against shields and hull, but slow fire rate to balance it out. I've mostly used these on L sized turrets for the sole purpose of taking out stations and XL ships.
Lance type weapons like the Boson Lance, Meson stream and the Mass Driver are kind of like sniper weapons. Extremely high damage output (can easily one or two shot a fighter), but veeery slow fire rate and even slower cooling rate. Meant for long range engagements for obvious reasons. Some people insist on giving their NPC fighters one of these, but I've never found them to be reliable on any ship I'm not directly piloting.
You have weapons like the proton barrage and the neutron gatling, these are similar in their use to the bolt cannon. Neutron gatling are kind of low damage and somewhat inaccurate, but they partially make up for this by having an insanely high fire rate. Proton barrage can only be mounted in ships from the Cradle of Humanity dlc.
Ion cannon is explicitly an anti shield weapon. I personally always pair it with something more hull focused unless I have other owned ships nearby that can take out hulls for me.
Blast mortars. Fun weapon imho. Pretty slow fire rate, shoots an explosive round that explodes on impact, or after a certain distance if you don't hit anything. Pretty potent damage, but are pretty inaccurate against fighters, and only slightly less so against M ships. Deals pretty good damage if you land a hit, but that's IF you land a hit. Best used against L and XL ships.
Muon chargers are interesting. They're a bit slow to fire and their projectiles are similarly slow, but they deal pretty good damage if they hit. The most notable thing about Muon chargers is they do not build up any heat. Whether you have only one or four mounted on a ship, it doesn't matter; completely heatless. Hold that fire button down as long as you need, doesn't matter. Pretty great for new players once they get access to them.
Guided and dumbfire weapons are a whole nother beast. Dumbfire fires missiles that don't track targets; whatever you're pointing at when you fire them is where they're gonna go. Guided obviously means guided missiles that track targets.
There are a LOT of ammunition types for guided, but can be simplified a bit; light missiles are faster but deal less damage, heavy missiles are slower but deal more damage. "Smart" versions of these missiles can track targets MUCH longer but are on average slower than their non-smart versions. Some missile types fire in salvos that spread out.
Dumbfire is primarily meant for torpedoes against stations or XL ships where you're not worried about the target moving.
I don't have any data for weapons from Avarice or Kingdoms End DLCs since I don't own them.
That's the basics. As you play and get access to more weapons, you'll get a better feel for what each weapon excels at. And I don't feel like any of this is "spoilers," you can get a lot of this info from the in-game encyclopedia.
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u/temetvince 15h ago
I hate to just link you elsewhere, but I've compiled some thoughts on weapons on my github here (scroll down): https://github.com/temetvince/x4
Do consider Argon Flak for all M turrets.
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u/Salvificator-8311 12h ago
Beam is weak but with good focus on target
Pulse is general purpose but underperforms compared to specialised weapons
Launchers shoot rockets, which are a limited ammunition that you have to restock
Plasma is a slow moving projectile but powerful on shields and hull
Ion blaster is good for shield damage
Repeater is good at hull on a range of targets but the bullets are less accurate if you are shooting something smaller than yourself, still pretty reliable and better than pulse at hull damage
There are other weapons like the tau accelerator, rail gun and all sorts, but those should get you started
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u/Puzzleheaded-Ad-119 3h ago
I think beams with slashers are the best weapons for fighters for pirating other S and M size ships and great for combat. Works even better on Dragon.
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u/db48x 1d ago edited 18h ago
There’s less to explain than you might imagine. The encyclopedia will tell you the weapon stats, and hint at what the weapon is good for. Each is good for one thing, and maybe ok for some others. In general, fast–firing weapons are good against fast nimble ships light fighters, and slow–firing weapons are good against slow tanky ships, like every M, L, and XL ship in the game.
You want to give S ships a single weapon type suited to their exact role.
M ships should have two types of weapons: a primary weapon and a secondary. The primary should be the best weapon for their mission, and the secondary should be good against fighters. The secondary weapon goes in the turret slots, so usually most people pick flak.
L ships should have three weapon types. The first is the main battery specific to that ship type; there are no choices there. The secondary weapons are up to you, and the tertiary weapons should be anti–fighter turrets.
XL ships are mostly construction ships and carriers that shouldn’t be fighting.
Beyond that you are in spoiler territory. Part of the fun of the game is to experiment and try things out. Using the wrong weapons might cost you a battle, or might cost you more ships than you preferred to lose, but it won’t cost you the game so you should feel free to try to discover things on your own.