Beam Weapons (Fire Beam)

[leopardenthusiast]

I'd call the fire beam and advanced user weapon. It requires you to have some other way of lowering enemy's shields, it is a damage over time type of weapon, and it is almost entirely worthless against auto ships. The damage over time aspect of the fire beam means it's not very effective at taking down enemy systems in any predictable manner. It also means battles are drawn out longer than battles using other weapons. So, you probably need stronger defenses to carry you through the long fights. It's also not a good weapon to stop an enemy from fleeing a fight. You're unlikely to take out the whole ship, piloting, or engines quickly using the fire beam.

That being said it is a fun weapon to use. Especially if you have sensors level 2 or 3. That way you can watch the enemy crew scurry around trying to manage the fires.

I've actually found the Fire Beam to be extremely effective at stopping enemies from escaping. If you fire it through the cockpit, they tend to be a bit distracted, and they often run out of the cockpit if you set three or four other rooms on fire.

[Captain_obvious]

The fire beam is one of my favourite weapons in the game. Granted, it's not as efficient as laser spam and it's unhelpful against AI scouts, but for sheer malevolence I can't resist picking it up whenever I can.

It's probably the most effective non-boarding way of disabling a ship. You need something to cut through shields (pair it with Ion II and you're laughing), but once you get through you can start fires in as many as six rooms. The best the enemy crew can hope for is that they can put all the fires out and repair all the systems before it charges again, let alone having enough time to heal (assuming they even have a medbay). Frequently they can't, and you can chain fires across the whole ship.

As long as the ship has more hit points than systems, you can't destroy it, so once the fire takes out the medbay and/or oxygen, you've got yourself a disabled ship without setting foot on board. Oh, and if you do send Rockmen on board it's just adding insult to injury.

[beefinator]

Definitely the most fun weapon in the game, IMO. lvl2 sensors essential, though.

Most effective, perhaps not, especially without a good way to knock out shields (or an alternate attack strategy, for certain rock-manned ships or AI scouts)

[Twinge]

Most effective, perhaps not, especially without a good way to knock out shields (or an alternate attack strategy, for certain rock-manned ships or AI scouts)

Rockmen often can't put out the fire quick enough, and the AI doesn't change at all in terms of fire avoidance if they're Rockmen, so they run away from fire they could be dealing with. So it's not actually too hard to asphyxiate an AI Rock crew.

You can also use a Fire Beam against Auto Drones somewhat effectively - but it's very slow and time-consuming. Lighting 2 fires will actually damage a system by 1 bar sometimes, so you can destroy one of these only with fire (though I personally didn't have the patience for it during my BBQ run so I just ran).

[Hivner]

The description for beam weapons states that their damage is reduced by one for each shield they pass through, but at least 2 beams, the anti-bio beam and the fire beam, deal no damage and instead hurt crew and start fires respectively. Do shields block these, block part of them, or do they not affect them?

[stylesrj]

The description for beam weapons states that their damage is reduced by one for each shield they pass through, but at least 2 beams, the anti-bio beam and the fire beam, deal no damage and instead hurt crew and start fires respectively. Do shields block these, block part of them, or do they not affect them?

No damage means they won't go through shields.