What do you think is the best general purpose capital ship weapon?

[Senko]

My go to preferences for ship weapons are generally heavy particle beam canon and a light laser net for point defense. Looking at the capital weapons I'm not sure what would be good general purpose weapon. Part of me thinks something like the antimatter missles would be a nice addition to a ships weapon system but I'm not sure there are some other tempting options like the gravity canon (can act as a tractor beam), super emp canon (good for non-lethal takedowns), supergraser (irradiates the target), vortex canon (reduce enemy speed), quantumn missle launcher (reroll a miss once) or the super X laser canon (fires in a line hitting everything in its path).

What do people think would be a good general purpose capital ship weapon assuming it has a number of particle beams and laser nets already on it?

[Garretmander]

Honestly, just like the persistent particle beam is one of the best heavy weapons, the persistent particle beam cannon is one of the best capital weapons in pure damage.

That said, if you're on a budget, trying to fit capital weapons on a dreadnought, the mass driver is the cheapest capital weapon, and not too terrible either, roughly equivalent to twin linked PPBs in damage, but only one mount and 25 BP instead of 63 BP and two weapon slots.

[Senko]

Budgeting isn't an issue here just looking for the best general purpose option. In fact the persistant particle beam weapon is less BP than the super X laser cannon.

I'm never sure if special abilities for these justify the loss of damage. Then again there is something to be said for the visual image of a line weapon just carving through multiple ships when it fires.

[Telok]

It really depends on how npc crews work. If the radiation can incapacitate npc crew members like they were pcs (1d4 rounds of saves vs. heavy radiation continuing on each hit, raditaion poison and disease tracks) and the npc crew members aren't all full gear 11th level, then heavy radiation weapons will kill or incapacitate crew faster than they'll chew through the hull. Nobody ever does this in play because it calls for deciding what level and armor those 300 nameless mooks have, then rolling and tracking saves.

But if the capital ship crews were treated like actual npcs, not just a meaningless number written in a stat block, then radiation weapons would tear through an crew that wasn't undead or constructs, ending fights faster and with less damage.

[Garretmander]

And gravity guns are good for holding a more maneuverable enemy in your best firing arc.

The line ability is going to be pretty rarely useful though.

[Senko]

Garretmander wrote:

And gravity guns are good for holding a more maneuverable enemy in your best firing arc.

The line ability is going to be pretty rarely useful though.

I imagine almost never its just an iconic image a super powerful beam cutting clean through an enemy ship and continuing on. Knock down their shields/hit points with the particle and persistant particle beams then fire the "Main Gun" and not only finish them off but anyone watching see's the energy beam go through the now destroyed ship and continue on.

[Metaphysician]

The Line property would be really useful if you played a mass battle, with tons of ships of varying tiers in play. Its just, who does that, and is it even practical.

[Xenocrat]

The gravity gun is a heavy version in your turret so that you can lock down an enemy in any direction, then maneuver your fixed capital ship weapon on to it hopefully before it can break lock and escape.

I like gravity gun turret plus antimatter missile capital weapon for max damage and to make point defenses a really good idea.