Cosmoteer Basic Laser Guide

In this video i will show you the main sellingpoints but also the major drawbacks of energy weapons and the steep price that you have to pay for the convenience of unlimited ammunition.
0:00 Intro
0:14 general Info
0:43 Why choose Lasers?
1:20 stat Problems
2:49 Blasters
4:25 Standard Designsuggestion
7:02 Disruptors
8:18 Point defense
9:12 Mining Laser
9:39 Ion Beams
10:05 Damage Falloff
10:37 Correct Merging
12:27 How many Beams
14:25 tl;dr
15:27 Weapon "synergy" (or desperate need for backup)
16:36 Outro
Captain Redstones Ultimate Guide To Prisms:
forum.cosmoteer.net/d/13701-t...

[@qownson4410]

How do you program ion prisms? Is there a tool or something? In the ship editor I can't seem to find the right way to click on the prism and change anything, in many videos I see, it's apparent that other people can just right click and get it to work, but I'm unable to.

[@captaincaffeine]

dont know exactly what you mean but if you mean aiming prisms at each other or towards a fixed direction: leftclick on the prism (not in the buildingmenu. just the regular window) and then you will see 5 new boxes on the bottom left corner. like turning it on or off for example. the third button has a prism and a crosshair. click on that button. now you have a red line that indicates where your prism will shoot. now just leftclick on wherever you need that laser to go. hope that helps

[@qownson4410]

@@captaincaffeine That doesn't happen, it's just trying to move my whole ship when I left click. I can't select individual items on my ship unless I'm in build mode or something. Is anyone else having this kind of issue?

[@captaincaffeine]

@@qownson4410 i pinned your comment so that others might be able to help

[@ThylineTheGay]

@@qownson4410 are your left/right mouse buttons somehow swapped?

[@qownson4410]

@@ThylineTheGay I don't think so, because either option, either right or left isn't pulling up options for me to select individual functions, like I see in some videos people can turn off their weapons or whatever during combat, I don't have that option. I can build ships and go into battle no problem (Fully aware I wasn't able to select individual weapons.), but now I have a strong desire to figure this out because I want to modify my ion beams, and prism alignment is kind of important, but I have no way of doing that right now. I set all of my key bindings to defaults, the last thing I'll try is uninstalling and reinstalling to see if something got corrupted..?

[@ctrouble2309]

Whenever this game gets the attention it deserves, I hope your channel will too.

[@WckedShadw]

Facts

[@JoshuaGanoTyraxLightning]

As of the time of this Comment, I didn't know this game existed till a few days ago when I watched a Vid of a Tuber named ScrapMan that I like that happened to try out this game after a 5 year hiatus from it. After getting this game, i'm now totally able to agree that it deserves more attention... especially after the Tutorial can get more buffness and polish to help with the actual learnin how to play it. ScrapMan in the afore-mentioned Vid and my first game in Career Mode both were dead in less than 2 hours... >_< I really hope ScrapMan sticks with it more and even brings into the fray more Tubers I like, including but not limited to Yzuei, LittleCorndogs, KaN, and Kosmo. :)

[@lordkandar]

As someone who has just started playing the game in the last week, I totally agree. I got sucked in pretty hard and am now trying to expand my knowledge. Videos like the ones in this series help a ton.

[@signe_stilett]

Very nice breakdown! I have been following the game for 3 years and still learned a bunch about blasters, things i just felt intuitively - and learned just how powerful shields are when empathized by logistics

[@rileyrogers8309]

I love this game, and these guides with specific numbers are right up my alley. Looking forward to more Cosmoteer math content!

[@meeps9286]

A very informative and helpful video! These tips and stats have really helped me build up my early ships

[@NickAndriadze]

.....Also I really appreciated you mentioning and crediting Captain Redstone's amazing Ion guide. It really helped me learn *(Almost)* all the juicy details about these amazing red lasers that I simply can't get enough of. Great video overall as well, I hope you keep on making more amazing Cosmoteer, or any other game-related guides/any other content. Your editing is top notch for such a small and un-recognized channel

[@Alnarra]

As weird as it is, honestly I'd love to see an analysis of engines / Engine rooms / shields / PD. Basically all the NON weapon stuff that requires crew / energy / etc. and how best to optimize that sort of thing So like a Defenses Video, on because like in my resarch on flack cannons info was so sparse And then for like shields everyone seems to have vastly different ideas on the best ways to actually use the

[@etienneduverney]

Crazy level of content !! Thank you Captain :D

[@mariono4274]

It would be pretty awesome and fun to see cosmoteer lets play! Great tutorials

[@francescodamico7621]

Very cool and fast explanation. Thx

[@Scout_io]

I just started playing Cosmoteer and I was very interested in Ion. I wasn't expecting a maths lesson but I love it.

[@toastypops3818]

Thanks for the video Captain! I was wondering, do you plan to post non cosmoteer related content further down the line? I'm sure you would love Oxygen Not Included and Rimworld. Both of the same caliber for how awesome they are!

[@captaincaffeine]

Played both games and love them. Around 700 hours in Rimworld and a game that i always come back to. However while i think i can do guides and comparisons for Rimworld, a youtubechannel called Noobert already did a great job with that. Maybe someday, but after the armor-guide, will try a Barotrauma video, since its a hidden gem in my eyes. During and after Febuary, i will probably have my hands full with the new Kerbal Space Program 2. Both because i will definitly make guides for it, but also because i want to play it for hours for myself. I will put Rimworld and OnI on the list nontheless.

[@toastypops3818]

@@captaincaffeine Sounds great! I would love to see KSP 2. I have watched a good bit of noobert's content. Just a fan of your style is all. Maybe instead a playthrough would be good? I am sure after your hundreds of hours you can think of a few interesting playthroughs. Thanks again!

[@sipofsunkist9016]

8:08 lmao “that reactor is looking mighty volatile today.” im stealing this

[@2Dead2Live]

Thanks for guides!

[@captaincaffeine]

Thanks for watching them ^^

[@Absolutecypher]

Hey Cap'n! Thank you for these guides! I am a bit surprised there was no mention of the structure elements (no armor, low hp ones). They can be put in front of prisms and they protect it. They also mitigate EMP hits (at least in current patch). I find it especially important because building a "barrel" makes the precise tracking of prisms pointless. This method makes it a worse railgun as it won't fire if it would hit any part of your ship. I find your content awesome as I am bad at crew management, but you might find the above worthy of consideration. Thank you for the videos!

[@justgoodvibes1500]

6:49 you can have very exposed blasters, as long as you put them separate from your reactor / command room, at least in career mode because the ai only targets those.

[@Murasame13]

The blasters are not exposed. AI focus fire on reactors typically, not weapons. Because the ship in question is a diagonal design, the big chunk of armor is the nose of the ship and will block majority of incoming damage.

[@lucles8118]

extremely underrated channel

[@adrianwolf90]

Nice guides!! Like them! Can you do a video about overall ship construction / design? Would love to see that.

[@Sup3r87]

one thing I would like to note just incase you haven't realized yet, is that you can combine two starting ion beams with just two prisms. both two prisms will have ion beams firing at them, and one aims at the other to combine the laser. Just wanted to point that out since prisms can get quite expensive and it's important to be economical as possible with them. 14:25 for example, this ship shown here can actually work with 5 prisms, not 7. you can remove the two prisms closest to the front that arent the central prism and get the same result (and have space to put something else there instead)

[@NickAndriadze]

Not true. With dedicated ion cores, *if* you have the two beams facing opposite of each other, you can combine two starting beams with only *a single* prism. There's no need for a second redirection prism, as the input prism can be your output prism (Or maybe an output prism into another also output prism). The *14:25* ship can work with only 3 prisms if aligned properly, even if it would require a completely different setup that might not be worth the prism cost saving in that case. Even still, that's the most optimal way you do it.

[@Sup3r87]

@@NickAndriadze oh yeah, that's true as well, forgot about that. thanks for sharing!

[@brynkotz5262]

Just re-found this game through you!

[@lippyausletzeburg1455]

THX Captain good infos

[@Oneye.]

Very nicely explained!

[@captaincaffeine]

Hi Oneye i wanted to take the opportunity to say thank you for sharing my guides on your discord server. It really boosted the numbers on my videos and i'm very grateful for that.

[@Oneye.]

@@captaincaffeine The official server isn't mine, but I'm glad it helped!

[@Howizard]

as a little plus/minus, if a mining laser takes out a system on the enemy it wont explode but drop more recaurces

[@vladthecon]

i am always happy when the mining laser gets the kill because that means loot.

[@leinis80]

Good video, thx.

[@demos113]

A good series. 🙂

[@Favmir]

I suggest you add bright outlines to your text to make them more visible. Thank you for the informative video!

[@b-saft3477]

Great video Can you make a quick update too it where you show the used "crew typs" and how many you need? Your amazing thanks for your great videos

[@RDY736]

Blasters can also be effective when used at the sides of ships especially if they are capital ships so that if they are swarmed those side blasters can deal damage or even kill the enemy trying to flank you

[@JuuriSeTohtori]

Very off topic question, do you think "swarm" playstyle is viable in this game? As in having a lot of smaller ships ganging up on bigger ships? It seemed quite fun in Reassembly (another quite similar game to this one), but just the cost of the most basic reactor alone is making me wonder if it's ever worth, as losing even just one ship is a huge blow in the early game. Also controlling a lot of ships without pausing and giving individual commands is quite a lot of effort (That might just also be my inexperience in the game, maybe there is a decent way to order all of the ships together and surrounding the enemies without making them crash on each other) But really good and informative videos, I hope you keep making these guides!

[@captaincaffeine]

"Viable" not really. "Possible" would be more fitting. Problem is that the damage escalates in later stages of the game to the point where even swarmers start to resemble frigates and cruisers instead of fighters and corvettes. From my personal experience, 3-5 ships are actually quiet useful as you still have decent survivability while also being agile with enough firepower to make use of flanking the enemy. Anything above 5 was a lot of pain after a while. i for one had 1 mainship with 4 escorts which were acting as 2 Formations. so my mainship would stay infront of the enemy, while 1 formation went to the left/back and the other to the right/back.

[@nguyenten6877]

I have a carrier that has a bunch of fighter sized ships only powered by a single battery block each. The idea is to detach them with explosive bolts, have them rampage around the enemy, then get scrapped by the carrier as near pristine parts have a 1 to 1 salvage ratio, restock the batteries once rebuilt by the carrier, and repeat. Haven't really tested it in campaign because I only have the demo though.

[@satannstuff]

Swarm tactics are potentially effective, but not remotely economic. You can absolutely overwhelm more powerful ships with sheer numbers, but you will get hit hard enough that it isn't possible to keep up for long. Generally speaking, anything that is going to get shot at should be capable of surviving it with minimal damage and you don't really have that option when your ships are individually much weaker than those the enemy ships are designed to fight. That's not to say there isn't a place for small ships, it's just that trading fire with more powerful ships isn't it.

[@dragonling748]

Consideratenator! I'm using 5 16x prisms with binary concentration. There is nothing that I can't cut in half. I am curious about the damage fall off though, is there a way to reduce this by adding more prisms to remove travel distance? For example of you have yo cover 1 16m gap, can you put in 8 crystals to reduce it to a zero metre gap?

[@devilbowser253]

from my experience blasters work very well against point defense and are good for take those out so more damaging weapons can hit the enemy more easily

[@photosyntheticzee9915]

Since lasers have a longer range, do they pair well with railguns? I was thinking of making a kiting ship as part of a combat fleet

[@Kebabje]

which weapon of every one in the game would you call to be suited best against swarmes? thus a lot of unarmored ships with lasers. about 5-10 ships.

[@quantum2330]

the part about crystals resetting the damage falloff and range intrigues me, i wonder if it might make sense to have a sacrificial crystal at the front of your ship that is, designed to explode mid way into the fight, maybe a few large shields to protect it if you can make that happen, from my testing it is quite possible to have a crystal just inside large shields, have it explode but, cause no major damage to the ship itself, it might not make a massive difference in the grand scheme of things but. I'm going to try it out anyway

[@davidklemen5264]

ive always used 2 ships, one cannon ship with tons of armor, shields, and pd systems for defense, and a low defense, high mobility laser ship that can flank behind the enemy and destroy everything from the behind. and i use lasers because they are low cost medium range damage that use 0 ammo.

[@bruhder5854]

When something gets destroyed by a mining laser, do you get more resources out of it as compared to being destroyed by other weaponry? I feel like this is the case but am not 100% sure

[@Jharug87]

Yea don't disregard the mining lasers they have on plenty occations saved me a lot of time / repairs and sometimes even my whole ship. Trying to kill off that slightly open reactor or that ion prism through the small gaps in armour and or shields my other weapons open up is exsedingly useful.

[@gabou_]

Noice

[@sipofsunkist9016]

i like to place one more prism at the end of the long barrel, YOU WILL LOSE THIS, however, it makes its firing arch infinite untill they kill it. after that u need to rotate the ship but hopefully the one free aiming was able to get a good first strike!

[@bruhder5854]

So it's better to not merge the lasers?

[@jacobe2995]

laser blasters outrange cannons though. that's the only use I ever find for them. they are good for fighters if you order them to maintain range and also give them enough thrusters to keep distance you can have one chunky boy eating damage and fighters taking out enemy guns. it's NOT a one trick pony like you said but they can be useful. very early game you can use them to take out pirate bases without having to unlock and build rail guns.

[@lippyausletzeburg1455]

hey Captain Caffeine i Love 7:41 thanks captain enjoyed the joke

[@hmmsus2003]

wild west style disrupter duel when?

[@ceoofdieng1905]

Disrupt a disrupter that is trying to disrupt you Noice

[@DreamingBlindly]

I use emp missiles and disruptors to disrupt my enemy's disruptors... Do I get a cookie with that bonus point? No. For real though, I genuinely thought that the only way to counter disruptors at the start was to use either an emp missile or another disruptor. 😅

[@Denamic]

There are no problems a bigger laser can't solve

[@NickAndriadze]

Honestly, I don't completely agree with you about how many disadvantages you named for the blasters. They might not be as armored and strong raw damage-wise like cannons are, but they also cover up less surface area, and their niche-seeming yet incredibly unique advantages like a huge firing arc and thus ability to be put on the side of your ship, tilted 90 degrees and their insane accuracy more than make up for their more practical downfalls. The video is still really really cool though, and it covers all the important things really well. Other things I have to disagree on: Point defences- Yes, Energy weapons (Things that PD physically can't shoot down) and nukes are the things Flak is decent at, but they are also *the only things* where flaks are at least remotely useful. I already rambled on about flaks for unnecessarily long in your cannon guide, so I won't bother anybody with all that crap. Aaaand Ion Beams. Oh boy are they a doozy. They are like Quantum Mechanics (Or Trigonometry, you choose) of Cosmoteer- Unnecessarily overcomplicated yet absolutely amazing. Because I have too much free time at hand, I have read the entire Captain Redstone's Ion Prism guide and think I know them really well, and yet I still can't make a proper 5 output array :c. Prism-making is basically a separate art of its own in the Cosmoteer community and a thing I absolutely suck at, and I think they and they specifically require a guide on its own, but for now, I'll only ramble on about how I think you didn't give Ion cores as a whole all the justice they deserve. I myself am a huge Ion Beam apologist. I mean they're the perfect weapon! They can concentrate insane amounts of damage in a singular tiny area, they can be defended very well, they can single-handedly carry a flagship with their truly mental DPS potential, and they simply just look *so cool!* Especially the giant diagonal ion cores which might just be the most aesthetically pleasing motherf*ckers ever created! I've made one myself as well :>. Also, they are indefinitely stackable, meaning you can make a titan with some 144 beams, or a monumental behemoth of absolute proportion with 15 output beams each with 32 beams combined! Sky's the limit and one can do whatever they want, plus with the advantage of having it fittable into a relatively protectable nozzle, or maybe multiple dedicated nozzles that merge into one after passing through dedicated ion tunnels. The only restriction isone's imagination. One thing I disagree with is how you said that they can't be used as their own things and need synergy *15:34**.* Yes, they indeed d synergize very well with Disruptors and most of my giant ion beam ships have them plastered inside of the barrel, but there's a point at which they become so powerful (Take any of Hatter's creations as an example. Anzu, Ace, Amazon, the joke ship ''Amazion''...) that they are practically useless and the beam itself can substitute for a shield-obliterating tool. One last thing that I think needs mentioning is how you can (And it is highly advised to) have multiple output prisms. This will increase the size of the your firing barrel, thus the vulnerable profile exposed to your enemies, but it will minimize Part Overkill which is a gigantic issue to beams and also allows your laser itself to have a larger profile *and* because there will be less combinations in total, the beam won't get diminished by much and be much, much stronger. That's the design philosophy used in truly giant Ion Core ships.

[@captaincaffeine]

I mentioned that they can be put on sides and showed an example of diagonal ships wich also make use of that arc at 6:30. Considering the surface area and less space in combination with armor (i think you mean hp): Standard blaster 1 Width 4000 hp 4000 hp per width -2 penetration resist Heavy Blaster 2 Width 12000 hp 6000 hp per width -2 penetration resist standard cannon 2 width 12000 hp 6000 hp per width -4 penetration resist heavy cannon 3 width 21000hp 7000 hp per width -4 penetration resist So the Blasters also loose against the cannons in hp per width. I might have been a bit harsh on them, but the advantage of tilting them 90° also has the disadvantage if the enemy tries to flank you and half of your weapons cant fire because your own ship is in the way. And the accuracy is mentioned later again aswell when i reiterate that they can drill towards weakspots but need help by any type of weapon that either has a high per shot damage like cannons to burst shields to the breaking point or emp/disruptors. My intention was not to make blasters seem worse than they actually are. But they definitly have shortcomings that need to be dealt with and be kept in mind. Also i greatly appreciate you commenting and sharing your knowledge under my guides. Even if we disagree in some aspects.

[@NickAndriadze]

@@captaincaffeine Yeah... True. I didn't discredit you by talking about diagonal ships+ blasters, really good accuracy and 180 degree tilting barrel. I just wanted to reiterate that again and to make it clear that blasters are probably the most underrated weapons in the game currently (Except for Ions which technical players like me absolutely adore, even if still overlooked by the majority and PD which most competitive players favor). They are easily the most versatile (And just like you mentioned, *synergizable* (If that's even a word)) weapons in the game and have some really good uses, both competitive and non-competitive... Also yes, about durability, you're absolutely correct. It seems like I overestimated blasters' durability, my bad. They can still be surprisingly tanky in most situations though, mostly because of their smaller surface area and are by no means squishy. They can do some tankin' on their own, even if cannons are tougher, and realistically so as well (I mean cannon's texture even had the same hexagonal pattern that regular armor blocks had back in Cosmoteer classic). There is one gaping advantage of energy weapons in general, that you didn't talk about, though... Unlike virtually every other weapon in the game, their munition count isn't finite, nor they need to invest in big and incredibly bulky cost and crew-inefficient setups to work properly. Also there's disruptor. Even if you hate all and every energy weapon, you need this beautiful, beautiful piss dispenser, as it is cheap, small, incredibly impactful and devastating for its size and requirements and pairs up with every weapon imaginable, even with the aforementioned incredibly powerful Ion Beams. There's no other way to put it, they're simply amazing.

[@psychkick666]

Why type so much? It is hard to read. Just simplify every point u want to make

[@jtanimationscomics6532]

Efficient....8 prisms....16 ions..... Nervous sweating as I look at my 128 prism (256 ion) mega deathstar

[@randallporter1404]

13:00 5 comma 33? 🤨

[@captaincaffeine]

yes. your decimal notation is probably different than what we do here. but the number itself is correct

[@yedemon]

Hello Captain Caffeine: I've done few test about ion merging recently, And i found some thing in different. The first thing is that by merging 128 ions together as a single output, we can get one maximized beam, that is, it kills double-block armor instantly, regardless to the distance (even at 300m). thus it drills fastest. The Second thing is that the beam is becoming more and more thick, 8->16->32->64->128, and even 256.. there seems to be no limit at this.

[@alenfishman9365]

This doesn't work anymore, shields need to be exposed to work. Armor blocks shields. Which is lame imo.

[@ShawFujikawa]

It does still work. Large Shields are blocked by armour, but Small Shields are not, which is why you should be using those to cover front-facing components.

[@alenfishman9365]

@@ShawFujikawa yea I realized that the next day. Which is pretty lame. But I'm sure they have their reasons.