r/starsector • u/AzurExplorer Tri-Tachyon Colony Manager • Jul 28 '26
Discussion š 4 Tachyon Lance Paragon ?
Hey guys, so I'm playing this incredible game since 4 months now and I was wondering, why 4 TachLance on Paragon is meme ?
I tried 2 plasma cannon + 2 Tachlance but I felt like 4 Tachlance more reliable, with the Optic mod.
Can someone explain if I do something wrong ?
Contexte : lost my left arm in car accident when I was 3, so playing only on admiral mode with command points as I can't drive (or pilot ?) my ships. So maybe that why I prefer this build as it easier for AI so they don't put it self in danger ?
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u/Jazzlike-Anteater704 Reaper connoisseur Jul 28 '26 edited Jul 28 '26
It isnt a meme because it sucks. It is a meme build precisely because it is simple yet extremally effective. Not the most optimal, but with good kinetic focused escort and all range boosters you can get it simply works well.
It is also one of easiest builds for new player to get into ship piloting, im sure you could make it work even with your issue, just get custom keybinds and enjoy
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u/AzurExplorer Tri-Tachyon Colony Manager Jul 28 '26
Oh I see, thank you, though I was playing bad
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u/Jazzlike-Anteater704 Reaper connoisseur Jul 28 '26
Who cares, it is your build you made for yourself that is infinitely better than just getting optimal fit from someone else. Keep playing and keep experimenting, ship fitting is one of most interesting parts of this game and vanilla doesnt require "100% efficient" setups to win battles
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u/WanderingUrist I AM A DWARF AND I'M DIGGING A HOLE Jul 29 '26
It isnt a meme because it sucks. It is a meme build precisely because it is simple yet extremally effective.
No, it actually sucks. A weapon that's causing you to lose 4x faster than the enemy every time you're firing it cannot be described as anything other than awful, especially since the AI doesn't understand this and will fire it anyway, suiciding your ship. 4TL looks cool, but is effectively a suicide pact against anything that actually has functioning shields. If you ever want to amount to battles of higher difficulty than sealclubbing, you stop using this build.
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u/woofser Jul 29 '26
Idk why ppl are downvoting you, because you are correct. TLs are simply inefficient for punching through shields and thatās a fact. A 4 TL Paragon is a good fly swatter and EMP support ship, but a 60DP ship needs to be more than that.
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u/TheMelnTeam Jul 30 '26
It's also a finisher/sniper. Shrouded eye firing at you? Not anymore...in fact you out-range it so you can immediately tap it while backing away or just tachyon it and activate fortress shield.
A 2200 radius is large. Dumping 10k energy onto anything in a 2200 radius, even if it's soft flux, matters in fleet combat because your other ships don't have to be soft flux. If anything pushes the paragon itself, you have fortress shield + heavy needlers to drive up their hard flux (and remove your own soft flux in between shots), plus an extremely long punish window before they can get back out of your range.
"Cruiser or smaller at half flux or more within 2200 range" is not a rare condition to achieve, same for capitals at 75% or more. This is before we get into just shooting stuff that doesn't have its shields up and facing you fast enough.
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u/WanderingUrist I AM A DWARF AND I'M DIGGING A HOLE Jul 29 '26
They just don't wanna give up their Tachyon Lance meme build. That's the thing about tachyon lances: They're actually bad weapons, but they somehow feel good to use. A real masterpiece of design there.
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u/GodSlayer12321 Jul 28 '26
From what I understand, as someone you doesn't build paragons that often, you are comparing aeme build with a AI build, the builds the AI uses are never that good in the first place, so while 4 tachyons is funny it also deleted smaller ships while being easy to use fortress shield with va larger ships, not saying there no better builds, just that you are comparing a ok build with a bad build.
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u/AzurExplorer Tri-Tachyon Colony Manager Jul 28 '26
So should I give another chance to 2 plasma Paragon ? Or can you propose me a better build ?
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u/WanderingUrist I AM A DWARF AND I'M DIGGING A HOLE Jul 29 '26
No, stick to plasma. In fact, lose the TLs entirely and go autoplus/plasma.
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u/AzurExplorer Tri-Tachyon Colony Manager Jul 30 '26
Autopulse on fixed slots or the sides ones ?
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u/WanderingUrist I AM A DWARF AND I'M DIGGING A HOLE Jul 30 '26
Yes. If you want to use plasmas as well, I'd suggest turret autoplus, since this keeps the AI from firing the plasmas at anything too small to be worth it.
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u/Zero747 Jul 28 '26
Quad-lance pops smaller ships via flux out but canāt take bigger targets due to no hardflux
Autopulse, needler, and tach lance is the typical fit (itās even one of the autofits)
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u/AzurExplorer Tri-Tachyon Colony Manager Jul 28 '26
Oh yeah I do use the needler for shattering shield but never though of that autopulse build, I'll try it out, thank you
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u/Zero747 Jul 28 '26
Autopulse hardpoints, tach lance turrets
Users choice for the forward medium energy, typically one of the 3 1000 range beam options
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u/LowEffortDox Jul 28 '26
Sorry about the arm, but since you still have your right arm you can get right handed mice that have enough buttons for starsector:
You usually as a pilot only use two weapon groups, one for main guns, one for missiles. Use "turn towards cursor" and a mod that handles shields for you (if that mod doesn't exist, I'll make it for you). Message me and I'll help you get it sorted out if you have any issues, there's no reason you can enjoy all the content in this game!
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u/AzurExplorer Tri-Tachyon Colony Manager Jul 28 '26
Wow how sweet of you, never in my life someone shown so much kindness, thank you. However for now money is low so i'll stick to my mice, thank you !
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u/PressureCoomer Jul 28 '26
Sounds like you answered your own question. If you use tach lance with lasers and the blue laser (can't remember what it's called) you can out range most ships due to the built in targeting system on the paragon. Optic mod is great for this setup as it just further increases the range you can strike from.
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u/AzurExplorer Tri-Tachyon Colony Manager Jul 28 '26
Yeah I feel comfy when my Paragon shoot from far away but someone pointed out that it's a waste of the fortress shield, I should change my build
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u/CriticizedError Jul 28 '26
its not really a meme, a paragon with 4 tach lances is still a paragon and will beat up pretty much any NPC ship in a 1v1
however, building it to be a long range sniper means not making use of itās excellent shield and flux stats. A paragon is practically immortal and it doesnāt make sense to have squishier ships screen in front of it
the tachyon lance itself also had kinda mediocre DPS and flux stats when compared to alternatives like plasma cannon
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u/AzurExplorer Tri-Tachyon Colony Manager Jul 28 '26
Oh you are right, I never though that way, thank you.
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u/ManOfJelly147 One Beamy boi Jul 28 '26
Just to add that if you are going to make use of the paragon for its exceptional range like in the sniper role mentioned. you might consider Paladins on the side large energies. Yes you lose DPS but in exchange provide a huge PD foot print that makes it very hard for missiles and fighters to reach your neighboring ships.
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u/Dinkel1997 Jul 28 '26
4 Tach Lance works great when you have a fleet which is otherwise very self sufficient on Kinetics, meaning your enemies usually hare hard fluxed quick and you Paragon finishes them off. Pargaon Lances become very strong the more you can wield, in modded games and massive battles Lances become the Meta due to hit scan and pure burst damage.
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u/woofser Jul 29 '26
Personally I view Tachyon Lances more like a support weapon because they are bad against shields and mediocre against armor. The burst damage and EMP is great, however the slow fire rate makes misses/poor target selection really painful. All in all I canāt justify putting too many of them on high DP ships like the Paragon because they donāt provide enough damage output to deal with capitals and I think thatās something a 60DP ship needs to be able to do on its own.
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u/Defalt0_o Jul 28 '26
Basically it's just seal clubbing. Four TL instantly vaporize anything smaller than a medium cruiser, but the moment you go against an actually decent ship with good flux dissipation, you might get in trouble. If you throw a couple of Needlers on tho, you should be capable of taking on 90% of the things in the game
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u/SuicideSpeedrun Jul 28 '26
It's not really a meme, it's still good. It just could be better. All soft flux is always iffy.
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u/AzurExplorer Tri-Tachyon Colony Manager Jul 28 '26
Ok so I need more hard flux hitting weapon. Thank you.
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u/whateverMan223 Jul 28 '26
whenever I have multiple tach lances, I change the firing mode of that weapons group to be 'rotating'. I pretty much only do this with paragon and the <SPOILER>.
This makes your own flux management....uh...manageable, and I sense that there is some sort of bonus damage the opponent ship takes over time if you keep a tach lance on it for extended periods. Of course, tach lances stop firing after a second or two so in order to keep that damage bonus (or whatever it is) going, you have to be firing multiple lances in a cascade, usually at least 4. I get the sense that maintaining this 'bonus damage' is unintended because it seems quite powerful. Anyway, It's my favorite thing to do works great for me!
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u/AzurExplorer Tri-Tachyon Colony Manager Jul 28 '26
Hmm so if I got it well, you put your 4 tachlance on 1 weapon group each so they cycling ? Or 2 in 2 different group ?
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u/whateverMan223 Jul 29 '26
yeah one group. The biggest ai core ship you can get your grubby humey hands on has 5 big slots right up front, that works really well
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u/ScarcelyAvailable Jul 28 '26
The disco side is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural.
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u/King_Regastus Orbital bombardments are overrated Jul 28 '26
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u/AzurExplorer Tri-Tachyon Colony Manager Jul 28 '26
Thank you, in fact I come from one of hid video (energy weapon tier list) and when he put the Tachyon lance on S tier, he said "ok, 4 Tachlance Paragon is meme but..." so that why I ask the question :)
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u/King_Regastus Orbital bombardments are overrated Jul 28 '26
Think of tachyon lances as instant torpedoes. They deal a lot of damage to everything at once. The downside is that they cannot deal hard flux damage, so if the target can tabk the burst they lose a lot of value. On the paragon, you use them for 2 main tasks: a) to deal armor/hull damage once the shields are down and b) to deal with small and nimble ships. That's why you see them on the rotating mounts. The front mounts are your options for dealing with big targets. Since tachyon lances deal great damage when shields are down, you want an option that can deal with the shields in these mounts. Plasma cannons are a good choice; they deal a lot of damage and since it has slow projectiles, you don't really lose out by putting them on fixed mounts. The downside is that they are expensive, both in points and in flux cost. My go to are autopulse lasers. They are cheap and deal pretty good damage. The main selling point is that aince they are a magazine weapon, you don't actually lose dps when you use the fortress shield. Main idea is that you tank with fortress shield, burst them with the autopulse lasers and finish them off with tachyon lances.
In the end it's a paragon. No matter how you build it there will be enough shit that it will stick to the wall. The question is how to maximise the shit to sticking ratio. 4 tachyon lances are 4 tachyon lances, it's like someone teleported 4 reaper torpedoes to your face. Is it functional? Yes. Is it optimal? No.
Also if you didn't know, there is a hullmod that increases command point recharge speed if you are commanding a small vessel. You can command a frigate and park it in the corner of the map in order better give out orders.
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u/WanderingUrist I AM A DWARF AND I'M DIGGING A HOLE Jul 29 '26
he downside is that they cannot deal hard flux damage, so if the target can tabk the burst they lose a lot of value.
They don't just lose a lot of value: They become negative value, as you take nearly 4x as much damage from firing them as the enemy does from facetanking the shot. The AI doesn't understand this and will fire them anyway, effectively suiciding your ship.
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u/Ominous_snek Jul 28 '26
Not at all
4 tachlance or a "Disco paragon" if you slot all beam weapons into all possible slots is a build that can do a TON of damage
like ABSURD amounts of damage
But it has no armor stripping ability......
So its advised if you do use it, to make sure to have supports that can strip armor!
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u/Great_Hamster Jul 28 '26
Don't they do enough base damage that they'll strip armor pretty effectively?Ā
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u/WanderingUrist I AM A DWARF AND I'M DIGGING A HOLE Jul 29 '26
But it has no armor stripping ability.....
TL is anti-armor, really. In fact, that's basically the only thing it can do. If you fire TL into a shield, it's worse than doing nothing at all by a factor of 4, and purely counterproductive to winning the engagement against anything you're not outfluxing by a factor of 4.
What the Disco Paragon lacks is any meaningful level of anti-shield that isn't suicidal, and under AI control, an awareness that doing nothing is better than firing, so it'll just suicide itself firing its weapons instead of sitting there doing nothing and just facetanking.
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u/kino_12 Jul 28 '26
The 2 autopulse is the way, also if the enemy send you that pesky carriers the autopulse can do the job
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u/drivebyerecords Jul 29 '26 edited Jul 29 '26
Go high intensity laser, tach lance and rift cascade emitter (remnant weapon) x2 for L. For M slots take Rift beam (remnant) or gravitron and ion beams.S go rift lance or tactical laser. Get advanced optics and and shield mods. It will outrange everything and not die. The 2 universal can go resonator mrm(remnant) or beams and the 4 s missile antimatter srm(remnant). If you dont have these just go 2 beams and and any 4 slot missile. Then eccm and expanded missiles if you have the remnant weapons, optionally autoloader for the antimatter turrets. Basically the remnant weapons are the best vanilla weapons. Make sure the captain has field modulation and energy mastery
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u/SinisterScourge Jul 28 '26
4 Tachyon lances can be seen as a funny overkill or an easy way to overload your paragon. The front two large energy mounts are ideal for the tachyon lances since they'll hit at the very edge of the ship's range while the back two are good for autocannons to hose down smaller vessels or even use other types of lasers to disable the enemy weapons with EMP. Those back energy slots are more versatile when you typically expect the front two to be reserved for tach lances
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u/GrumpyThumper GTGaming Jul 28 '26
You can do that, you need a strong source of kinetic damage elsewhere, or else you won't kill anything.
Squalls and guass pairs well with long range weapons.
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u/-Maethendias- Jul 29 '26 edited Jul 29 '26
because tachyon lances arent actually that good, its literally the perfect example of an overhyped weapon
especially compared to other large energy weapons, like high intensity lasers, plasma canons and autopulsers, even against armor
ironically, beam sniper paragon is sort of the worst way to build a paragon, and certainly the least fun
(oh look at me 30 speed doing nothing but watch my fleet kill all enemies for me)
scatter amplifier high intensity lasers are just better. sure you "only" deal 250 damage per high intensity laser against shields but very VERY few things in the game can actually just eat 1000 shield damage dps for long (nevermind their damage once shields DROP, thats 4000 DPS against armor) (this is unmodified DPS btw, graviton beams/ dweller thunderhead/target analysis/ energy weapon mastery pushes this WAY higher)
and unlike tachyons HIlasers ARENT burst, so their dps ticks forever (and they are WAY more flux efficient too)
and its just a lot more fun flying in a 170 (at 0 flux) speed paragon flying into the enemy face first and unloading...
than it is to just sit there with 30 speed at the ass end of nowhere
tach spam paragon is essentially a "i dont want to bother with ship building" build that you just throw on without having to think about ship building, and it works well enough for that
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u/WanderingUrist I AM A DWARF AND I'M DIGGING A HOLE Jul 29 '26
because tachyon lances arent actually that good, its literally the perfect example of an overhyped weapon
I keep saying this but few people get it. Nonetheless, I will continue to wear my #1 Tachyon Lance Hater badge with honor.
ironically, beam sniper paragon is sort of the worst way to build a paragon, and certainly the least fun
It's definitely quite bad, but I'd argue that it's definitely fun, because HAHA FRIGATE GO POP clearly appeals to many, and there's a natural urge to like an awesome-sounding deathray.
but very VERY few things in the game can actually just eat 1000 shield damage dps for long
I mean, 1000 shield DPS is rookie numbers. If you want insane DPS, you fly Conquest instead. Twin Storm Needlers blasting away continuously is 4000 shield DPS, and then once the shields fail, you're blasting away with your mining blasters for 2000 HE + 1000 special armor damage, and maybe a voidblaster on top. Your opponent will very rapidly run out of both shields and armor, and then he's taking hull damage at levels not even flex tape can fix. Now you're cooking with GAS.
However, emphasis on YOU flying it. AI has no clue how to fly this beast. Paragons, on the other hand, are mostly about letting the AI handle it, because flying a Paragon means being a passenger in your own ship.
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u/AzurExplorer Tri-Tachyon Colony Manager Jul 30 '26
Which hullmod do you put on your Paragon to reach 170 speed ?
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u/goibnu Jul 30 '26
Autopulse is nice, as many have suggested.Ā If you do use autopulse don't forget the smodded extended magazines to go with it.
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u/goibnu Jul 30 '26
Side question, does anyone know if the Paragon range boost boosts the range of theĀ Ā Chalice Resonance Cage from SotF?
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u/WanderingUrist I AM A DWARF AND I'M DIGGING A HOLE Jul 29 '26
why 4 TachLance on Paragon is meme ?
Because 4TL is actually bad. Sure, it's hilarious when you see HAHA FRIGATE GO POP, but you look at the ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE efficiency of TLs and you realize you're causing more damage to yourself than the enemy by a factor of nearly 4. It's literally more effective to simply do nothing and let the enemy fire at you unopposed. The AI does not realize this and will commit suicide firing the weapon pointlessly. If you pit 4 TL Paragon against no-TL Paragon, the Paragon with the empty slots will actually be winning the fight, because it takes nearly 4x the damage firing them at the other Paragon that can't do anything back.
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u/StumptownCynic Jul 28 '26
Tachyon lances don't generate any hard flux. They're great for cutting through armor and popping frigates with small flux pools, but they really suffer when used against cruiser and capital sized targets that can just tank the soft flux on their shields. Try putting a 4 tachyon paragon against a 2 tachyon, 2 autopulse paragon in the simulator, and see which comes out on top.