heh yep thats the same setup i do. my favorite combo which can slaughter everything even with just 3 stars. I use mass driver on wings and the nose+engine centers. Ranged beam on the 4 outsides for nose and engine. Then minigun and flak cannon cris crossed for the small nose and engine parts. i even did it on the hardest setting and allowed the zombies to turn 200 and i just had like 10 on my side. I kept killing 3 at a time non stop and hardly took a scratch especially when i upgraded it all to 6 stars man that slaughtered everything to easy even on the hardest setting against that many zombies.

One of my personal favorite tricks for wide load builds like this is the "tailgater's Karma". Get them chasing you hard while you have either tons of shotguns and machammers or a bunch of AOE warheads like EMP and Corrosive equipped, wait until you can make sure they can't avoid the collision, and hit the breaks (with your shields boosting for the warhead version).

Basically the space equivalent of getting pissed off with some loser trying to "push" you up over the speed limit on the highway and deciding to give them a Grand Theft Auto-style seat belt check... Minus the jail-time, totaled car, potential injuries, and realisation you're an undeniably horrible person for intentionally causing a most likely fatal crash.

cute

To be honest, designs like this are a tad overzealous, the common mindset is "More guns must mean tons of Damage, right?" Wrong, I recommend slow grinding when you finally get out of Campaign and venture into the land of custom scenarios. Grind for as much scrap as possible, this is easily done by allowing other captains to build your bases for you and reassigning them to yourself to collect the stockpiles. its not recommended to do this with more than 7 of your starbases if you can help it, the trick is to strengthen your bases before expanding, and always ensuring that if you brawl with another faction you can completely manhandle their boss. Generally they are their strongest member.

looks so coooooooool, but is that really powerful?

Cool build!

I do it similar to you.. but the other way around.

My problem was.. after taking down enemy shields.. my anti-shield weapons became useless. I don't like that. So I added 85% anti-material weapons and hangars. My ship design is 2 rows of cores from front to back. With just one xl-weapon at front and at back and 4-5 xl-wings. I bought many level-6-cores over time.

So.. my tactic is to jump into battle.. turn directly to enemy.. and start ramming on full speed. Just one hit is enough to kill shields. Collision needs 3-5 seconds. Keep shift + w pushed. My own shields are strong enough to stay at 60-70% because of the xl-parts and because of the level-6-cores.

After killing the shields this way.. its a short one to take the enemy down with anti-material-weapons. Full upgraded bases work this way also perfectly. Battle is over just 30 seconds after jumping in.

This build no longer works due to the horrendous turn radius of large ships. Also shields are nearly imprenatrable late game, so having three weapons that fire on shields is useless. Damage does not scale with size, and "ramming" does barely any damage anymore. The real heavy hitters are environmental weapons, like the shield bombs and armor acid boxes. These are meant to help you when the odds are against you, which btw late game, 2 enemy ships will ALWAYS beat you. So no, ramming is not a good idea. it hasnt been for months. I REPEAT DO NOT RAM. NO BUENO.

hmm, I use same skeleton, but not this way! LOL Never thought it may be turned for 90 degrees :) Great idea!

an idea*