Is Mass driver worth to be researched ?

[Herode]

I'm just beginning my third game , I resigned the 2 first ones around t150 when facing overwhelming ennemy fleets (they start to show in numbers around t100 or so...)

These two small games left me with the feeling that MassDrivers are useless :

- they are weak weapons, difficult to use against standard monsters (snowflakes) without building lots of ships. Which takes time, resources, and leads to maintenance issues (+5% PP / ship owned by the Empire).
- as soon as Laser 1 or 2 show up, MassDrivers are outdated. And Laser shows pretty soon on ennemy fleets...
- speaking about Laser : MassDriver 4 requires a cumulative 22 RP and 9 turns to reach. Laser 1 requires 40 RP and 8 turns. You gain 1 turn (research 5 at the beginning of the game, so 40 RP = 8 turns) at the cost of 18 extra-RP, but considering the MassDriver will be absolutely useless around t40-60, I guess the real loss is the 22 cumulative RP you've spent searching MD4.

Thus, my question is : can someone use MassDrivers efficiently ? And how ?

[Dilvish]

From your comment about 5% fleet maintenance, I'll infer you're playing version 0.4.2 [5771]. I recommend playing the most recent weekly test build. There have been a lot of changes since [5771]. Back with that version I'll agree it was common for me to skip from Mass Driver 2 to Laser 1, but that's not the case anymore. The way the tiers are now, Mass Driver 4 is better than Laser 1; you might want to search up the thread on rebalancing weapons to get a better overall feel. Fleet maintenance is now just 1% per ship, but it applies to all ship parts other than colony/outpost pods, rather than just to hulls as it used to.

[Herode]

OK, great !
I've just switched to the last test version, next game in progress. I've gone straight to Laser 1 this time but I'll try MD4 again in the near future.
Thanks !