[IronBeer]

I put down beams, but something like a long-range, high RoF Harpoon would be an absolute nightmare to fly against.

[Dragon]

AA missiles are difficult to set up right, they can easly turn into a nightmare or become completely pathetic (like FS missiles).
Also, difficulty wreaks havoc on missile effectveness, unless it's set up to be unaffected by it.

[QuantumDelta]

AAA, it's not dodgable (only avoidable by flying in outside the turrets FoV) and has the long range required.

Really though any cap ship is boned if you have a maxim or a treb available.
Or even stilettos if used properly.

[TrashMan]

A Maxim with the additional Circe and Morningstar properties.

Have you ANY idea what this weapon does to fighters?

[Marcov]

IMO if we're talking about non-canon weapons here, I think I'd put my money on an "anti-fighter Helios" sort of thing. Well, what happens if you make the Helios travel 300 m/s, make it heat-seeking, and take out the ridicolously low shield-damage percentage? Wouldn't it be able to eliminate like a hundred fighters in a single blast? How about a refire rate of 0.1?

[General Battuta]

IMO if we're talking about non-canon weapons here, I think I'd put my money on an "anti-fighter Helios" sort of thing. Well, what happens if you make the Helios travel 300 m/s, make it heat-seeking, and take out the ridicolously low shield-damage percentage? Wouldn't it be able to eliminate like a hundred fighters in a single blast? How about a refire rate of 0.1?

That's so underpowered. Why don' t you just make a beam with 100km width and about 900000000000000 damage? And a refire rate of .001? And hull, shield and subsystem multipliers of 50000000000? Also make the turret it's on invulnerable. And in fact make the whole ship invulnerable while you're at it. And make the beam invisible.

[Marcov]

That would be like the Volition bravos. Even worse, perhaps.

[General Battuta]

Which is why it's so pointless.  Don't look for 'best' weapons, look for 'interesting', i.e. add to gameplay.

[Dilmah G]

Well to be fair, this thread is about the deadliest anti-fighter capital weapons possible. I'm quite sure some kind of uberhelios would fit the bill.

[General Battuta]

Not hitscan. Also incredibly pointless. Please don't make this threat about incredibly pointless things; it was sort of going interesting directions until about six posts back.

As a rule any time you ask

what happens if you make the [canon weapon] travel [at arbitrarily high speed], make it [possessed of arbitrary targeting abilities], and take out the [disadvantage that makes it balanced]? Wouldn't it be able to [do anything]? How about a refire rate of [converge to 0]?

you're just going down the road towards the place where all ships move at infinite speed and are invulnerable and fire instantly propagating infinite damage shockwaves.

[Marcov]

Actually, all I wanted to know was some ideas for effective anti-fighter canonical weapons that could be mounted on capships. I didn't want to start stuff like "uber-turret", or "uber-helios", etc.

This is getting too far. The point is, how deadly can a capital ship get anti-fighterwise, with the weapons available in the editor?

I might sound like contradicting my previous comment, though. Well, just feel free to express what you want, as long as it's ontopic (BTW, I didn't really like this issue about uber-weapons, since I personnally it would actually be boring to read in the first place. Well, I already gave the uber weapon theory out, so there's actually no sense at all anymore in discussing it again.)

[General Battuta]

Maxims with a high AI class are probably going to be pretty deadly.

[Dilmah G]

Do Maxims have the shield damage to bring the hurt to a fighter or bomber though? Especially since the latter tend to have stronger shielding, in my memory.

Also, we should do some experimentation with multi-banked turrets, so you could perhaps fire something like a Prom with a Maxim from the one turret. The energy to power more than a few of turrets packing that sort of armament is beyond my thought bubble, however.

[Shade]

Please don't make this threat about incredibly pointless things

And I was just about to suggest a gun shooting flatulant cows at relativistic speeds too

[General Battuta]

Do Maxims have the shield damage to bring the hurt to a fighter or bomber though? Especially since the latter tend to have stronger shielding, in my memory.

Yes.

[Marcov]

The Maxim has an incredibly long range. The Maxim has an incredibly high hull damage. The Maxim needs an incredibly high power output, which wouldn't really matter on capital ships.

On the other hand,

The Maxim has poor shield damage. The Maxim doesn't perform well on capships, since it's supposed to have an incredibly high firing rate which doesn't work on laser turrets. So, isn't the Kayser better on this aspect?

Please don't make this threat about incredibly pointless things

And I was just about to suggest a gun shooting flatulant cows at relativistic speeds too

Hey, that actually reminded me of Age of Empire's "jack be nimble" cheat, where catapults throw cows and naked super villagers  .

[Dilmah G]

Isn't the Kayser an even more aggressive energy hog than the Maxim?

[General Battuta]

The Maxim has poor shield damage. The Maxim doesn't perform well on capships, since it's supposed to have an incredibly high firing rate which doesn't work on laser turrets

Like I said, high AI class. Preferably high Fury AI class. Better yet, make a Maxim#turret with same-turret-cooldown. That flag is half the reason the warships in BP2 are so well defended.

[Kolgena]

It is, but it doesn't suffer as badly as the maxim does in the DPS dept when fire rates are capped arbitrarily low by the turret.

I think full morning stars (adjusted to fighter fire rate) is actually pretty deadly. It means nothing can get close to you while you juggle things to death. If the bombers had lock restrictions on their bombs, it also means that they'll never get aspect lock.

[General Battuta]

It is, but it doesn't suffer as badly as the maxim does in the DPS dept when fire rates are capped arbitrarily low by the turret.

this state of affairs should be rectified by any sane modder!