I have always gone energy, mainly because I like the Vodyani. 

I am playing now as basically militarist unfallen (fire all the way) and thought I would go projectiles and they seem terrible. The fact that missiles can be shot down just means my mediums don't get any fire through vs their small craft spam you seem to either abliterate the enemy or dont kill a single ship. At least with lasers you can take a load of ships out even if your out numbered.

How are you ment to use them and are they ever better than energy?

OK. First thing to take note of is that right now, FLAK is broken. It is way too effective. 

Also, there are several other combat changes that are coming in a future update(s) that are going to balance energy vs projectile weapons more fairly. This will include swarm missiles and A Certain Scientific Railg errr...rail guns!

currently, there is absolutely no point going for projectiles weapons. last night, i continued my playthrough with the Cravers on impossible difficulty, on large map. On turn 100, I met the Lumeris, and as the Cravers, i nuturally declare war on them. by then i my score was ahead of the second most powerful AI, and the Lumeris was third on score board, which meant i have bigger fleets, and more systems. 

during my first battle with the Lumeris, my attack power over match her fleet. i have 1 carrier, two cruiers, and two battle ships and bunch of destroyers. my carrier was equip with the best projectile weapon in the game, the purple missiles (which is the Orichalcix missile, a freaking era 5 military tech), and my cruisers were equip with 1 Orichalcix missiles, and the rest of the attack modules were equip with red missiles (Adamantian missiles), and both fleets had 26 cp. 

the result was terrible, i lost my carrier, both of cruisers, 1 of my battleships, and three destroyers, and i didn't even managed to kill half of the Lumeris fleet, despite the fact that i have the biggest ships, and the best projectile weapon in game. i couldn't believe the result, so i went back and watch the battle, and what happened was the Lumeris were equipe with two types of weapons, slugs and lasers. those damn tier 3 slugs shot down all my missiles before they could hit the enemy. despite having Orichalxi missile, the best missiles in game, the slugs had no problem shooting down all of them. while my missiles couldn't hit crap, the Lumeris ships continue to do dmg to my fleet with slugs and lasers, and that was why i lost so many, while the Lumeris lost so little. 

It was terrible that I had to accept a truce from the Lumeris by giving them a crap ton of techs that they did not have. and after that, i use 10 turns to refit all my ships, excluding the battleships (because they are meat shields in the Cravers army) with energy weapons, specificly beams, beams, beams beams, everything beams. and when i declare war on the Lumeris again, my carriers and cruisers wipe the floor clean, since slugs can't intercept beams, my ships kill all of the enemies. 

so, there you have it, at the current stage, projectile waepons are absolutely useless, there is no point having them. but you could put slugs on some of your ships to intercept missiles from the enemy, but there is no reason to use missiles as an attack module. 

Honestly I just stopped playing until I see a patch for these issues come out. And right now I'm also starting to form the opinion that Amplitude is sitting on this a bit too long. Sometimes a few incremental updates are the way to go rather than wait for the fanfare of a named DLC. 

Added to this, currently the AI can't deal with pirates and don't build larger ships in the numbers they should be. Too many compounding issues to keep playing for me.

Another thing I don't really use is the squadrons, are they any good?

I know the ai isn't building carriers but in my last few games on endless a few factions have been building mediums and kitting them out pretty well. It`s so random though, sometimes im vs an earth empire that has taken most the map and has a massive military with 50-60 upgraded mediums or you get 20 small ships not upgraded at all.

wraithghost wrote:

Another thing I don't really use is the squadrons, are they any good?

I know the ai isn't building carriers but in my last few games on endless a few factions have been building mediums and kitting them out pretty well. It`s so random though, sometimes im vs an earth empire that has taken most the map and has a massive military with 50-60 upgraded mediums or you get 20 small ships not upgraded at all.

absolutely not, squadrons have no use at the current stage of the game. first of all, if the enemies have decent amount of slugs in their fleets, your fights and bombers will be shot down very quickly, on the other hand their dps is lower compare to missiles and much lower compare to energy weapons. third, no ship hulls in the current game can carry enough squadrons to make fighters and bombers a real threat. even though the final ship hull is called carrier, many ships only have two hangers, that's just way too little to make the squadrons effective, a ship will need a lot more than that to make the squadrons a valid choice. currently energy weapon is the meta in this game, and beam is king. Note: i think the currently final ship hull in this game should call dreadnaught, and the devs need to come up with a ship hull called carriers which has lots of hangers. 

ES 2 games are too long for me to roll the dice. I have plenty of other stuff in my library. 

It took about a year and a half for EL to really start shaping up and getting the kinks out. ES 2 is farther along in terms of mechanics and AI so hopefully it won't be too much longer until we get a "settled" game

Slashman wrote:

ES 2 games are too long for me to roll the dice. I have plenty of other stuff in my library. 

It took about a year and a half for EL to really start shaping up and getting the kinks out. ES 2 is farther along in terms of mechanics and AI so hopefully it won't be too much longer until we get a "settled" game

Yeah it does get to the point where you know you have won but you still need another hour to finish it. I have to turn the academy quest off because it takes so long and is'nt exactly fun.

Instead of sitting on some random planet for 10 turns, It should spawn an enemy base like the pirate bases with fully maxed out fleets to kill, at least it would be a challenge.

One thing I like about stellaris is the end game crisis. It really makes the end game less of a slog and more fun and challenging.

I have been continually asking the devs about things like crisis level enemies in the end game to shake things up. Some ancient space monsters or rogue AI bent on wiping out all other life in the galaxy. Fondly remember the Von Neuman berserkers in SOTS or that translucent ship that could take over your ships and spawn AI colonies. 

Some kind of armageddon-like event to change the game flow would be awesome.

Slashman wrote:

I have been continually asking the devs about things like crisis level enemies in the end game to shake things up. Some ancient space monsters or rogue AI bent on wiping out all other life in the galaxy. Fondly remember the Von Neuman berserkers in SOTS or that translucent ship that could take over your ships and spawn AI colonies. 

Some kind of armageddon-like event to change the game flow would be awesome.

haha, i like this idea, just like Stellaris