Laser Storm

A group of laser moons continue to attack invaders ahead.

Very underpowered Aura. Main purpose is to pop turrets off. Not really recommended for anyone, even pros or beginners alike.

The details of this skill are listed as follows:

Level	1	2	3	4	5	Ultimate
Laser Moon Number	3	3	4	4	5	5
Max Damage	89	94	98	103	107	112
Max Radius	350	375	400	425	450	450

• Ultimate: Laser Moons prioritize active turrets, which means that they will target turrets that are not dead, and after they are dead, they will no longer target it. The Laser Moons will also ignore cockpits and Sparrows where possible (unless there are no active turrets in range).
• Score: 5.45 / 10
• Useful Levels: Ult
• Priority Level: 6 / 8
• Illustration:

Comments

• Editor: They look like light balls in a ballroom.
• ☀🐕: Proposal (1) Unlimited range; (2) Laser Moons are always deployed even while not activated, therefore eliminates the deployment and withdrawal time; (3) Add two counters to prevent energy overflow. Upon activation, counters are always used first if both the Aura and counters are full. With the changes mentioned above, LS gets to keep its relatively low DPS while its versatility and energy efficiency is improved. (Flyingfish: I mean, it all sounds perfect. But like LS is meant to be a more relaxing Aura from the get-go. Plus, it seems a little bit complicated program wise.)
• 大白白龙: The Tac Moon is actually an exclusively enhance for Ogon so that it can clear many difficult missions.
• 圆锥曲线: Laser Storm's High Power is also useful if you know how to use it.

Usage

LS is the most useless Aura at level 1. It does puny DPS over the same long duration of 4.5s, and targets anything it so likes, and not to your liking. The worst thing about level 1 LS is its tiny radius, and that you must keep in range of some invader in order to deal any damage at all. To keep up close to the invaders with such a tiny radius is simply ridiculous.

There are really no changes to how you would use LS at all levels, including ult. The ult basically is the one that is the main function of LS, to pop turrets off. LS is really just spam unless it is too small, generally if it can cover a bit of the back row invader turrets it's fine to use it. The very big problem about LS is, it lasts so long, in that there is almost always particles wastage since the next LS after the current one fades would very likely to be full Aura size. And there's no way to tell how much particles to collect because you can't see the Aura radius growing in size while the current LS is in use. My suggestion is just don't care and treat LS as nothing more than a supplementary damage. Manual Aura management is too difficult without any form of visual indicator.

Bear in mind that an ult LS has a slight disadvantage: It does not target Sparrows unless all other invaders on field are dead. Thus, always eliminate Sparrows while LS is doing its work. The only best advice i can think for LS is to try your best to aim your main weapon at the larger invaders like Eagles and above (as well as Sparrows as already mentioned), letting LS to clean up the Ravens and Herons.

The issue with LS is it deals damage very slowly, and thus, as an offensive Aura, it fails at its job to eliminate targets fast. LS also switches targets after firing at one for some time, which means turrets sometimes do not get popped off quickly enough unless you use your main weapon to explicitly finish off the job. The need to usually stay sufficiently close to the invaders, especially on waves where you are short of particles due to the wave having only larger invaders, is another big problem. Especially so in such waves with larger invaders as they feature more deadly turrets most of the time. The absence of the need to lock on any targets means it is also possible to accidentally fire LS without invaders being around. While this does mean that there is no excuse for you to not fire LS when you want it to, there is never a need for you to actually launch LS pre-emptively, but you only do it when the invaders have fully arrived.

In daily missions, LS is almost irrelevant in the higher ranks as the slow damage output coupled with no means of AoE damage mean that LS is nothing more than just ever so slightly bumping up your main weapon's DPS. The dense waves also mean that lots of particles are being wasted as LS is being disposed of, making LS just utter garbage, and best reserved for fun during community or specialist missions.

APEX 1: High Power

• Game Description: A constellation of Laser Moons outputs all damage in less time.
• Numeric Interpretation: The laser moons increases from 5 to 8, the max duration decreases from 4.5s to 2.25s.
• Score: 3.36 / 5
• Ships with the APEX: Buhloo (Epsilon), Elyon (Beta), Fujin (Sigma), Lokie (Delta)

Editor: In high-difficulty missions, a half-hearted attack is not suitable.

This apex reduces the maximum duration of LS to exactly half of it's original duration (2.25s). All other sizes of LS also have their duration halved accordingly. However, the total damage dealt remains the same.

This apex is extremely useful for all LS ships, since one of the biggest problems with LS is it lasts so long, until by the time it ends, you realize your Aura is full again and would thus have wasted particles. This apex fixes that problem. It particularly benefits speedrunning ships since you always need a higher DPS in speedrunning. The speed of many speedrunning LS ships is fast enough that you kill all the small invaders so quickly in that LS has not even finished its job, so you waste TONS of particles. Despite the fast enough speed to kill smaller invaders, they are still unable to par with other speedrunning ships. This apex allows speedrunning to still have a full Aura spam at all times even with the shorter LS time, which still wastes a bit of particles but at least, it's not as bad as normal LS. You can thus say that, offensive power wise, this apex brings LS closer in par with MS, but still, not quite.

This APEX becomes more dominant in the act 4 and 5 compared to the first 3 acts because there is enough energy to use and enough invaders to attack; these two conditions cannot be met simultaneously in acts 1-3. Higher DPS means higher output, but it also means higher damage loss when there are no targets to attack. Therefore, using this APEX with the above four ships often leads to a reversal against those without this APEX starting from the act 4.

APEX 2: Tac Moons

• Game Description: Two Tactical Super Moons concentrate their firepower to dispose individual targets more quickly.
• Numeric Interpretation: 2 Laser Moons with stronger power will focus on invaders concentrately.
• Score: 1.91 / 5
• Ships with the APEX: Havoc (Gamma), Ogon (Beta)

Editor: Tactical big guy, must be brought out in critical moments.

This apex modifies LS such that now there are only 2 laser moons shooting 2 highly concentrated lasers on turrets, popping turrets significantly faster. As per usual LS ult, it will switch targets once the turret is dead. The total damage remains unchanged.

This apex helps ships that have difficulties in main weapon usage to direct their shots onto turrets. The Tac Moons then help cover turret popping such that you can focus on trying to pop off turrets that are closer to you. Unfortunately, since you can't control which turrets the Tac Moons are aiming at, you just have to hope and pray. At least, however, turrets are popped off faster which means better survivability for ships with this apex. Otherwise, this apex isn't terribly useful. With the dense waves in daily missions, the priority is to completely eliminate these smaller invaders quickly, which Tac Moons doesn't help much in that aspect.

There are certain patterns regarding target prioritization: Similar to a regular Laser Storm, controlling the distance between the ship and the invader such that only one or two attack targets are within the aura, indicated by the golden small circles inside the aura, can form a focus fire. This is because the essence of Laser Storm is a subset of aggregation. However, this APEX adds several conditions on top of this:

1. The horizontal distance between the target and the ship's core is inversely proportional to the priority of being attacked.
2. The health of the invader's main body is directly proportional to the priority of its turret being attacked.

Combining these two points may explain why sometimes it doesn't attack targets that are closer. Large turrets require four hits to be destroyed, and during turret popping, each shot from Laser Storm takes 0.5 seconds. This means that Laser Storm can transition after the 4th attack begins, allowing Laser Storm to continue attacking, and then immediately switch to the next target.

APEX 3: Shield Breaker

• Game Description: Laser Moon type S deals extra damage to shields.
• Numeric Interpretation: Lasers deal 2.5x damage to shields.
• Score: 3.09 / 5
• Ships with the APEX: Elyon (Lambda), Reaper (Tau), Xaniea (Tau)

Editor: Quickly breaking shields is an urgent need for slow-paced weapons. Appearance enthusiasts rejoice, as the so-called cost-effectiveness is linked to demand. If the pursuit is aesthetics, then this APEX is worth it.

This is a very effective enhancement in shield missions because breaking shields quickly means that the High Impact main weapons can perform more efficiently. Besides, it has no difference from regular Laser Storm, so you'll only use them in shield missions. But before purchasing these APEXs, carefully consider whether the other APEX for those ships offer better value.