Next are the best ions (Ion Blast II, Ion Charger) and the bombs which have decent utility (breach bomb I, ion bomb). I'd also throw Artemis in here, since it's by far the best missile weapon (although I've read about Pegasus also being viable? Haven't tried it much myself though). Pike beam and glaive beam are here for having low damage potential and being too slow respectively. Just below them are the relatively powerful beams (mini-beam, hull beam) and lasers (dual lasers, heavy laser I).Д«elow them are all other laser weapons (more projectiles is always helpful, no matter the source), with perhaps the exception of the Burst III, which is too slow. Flak I is unavailable in vanilla, which is one factor that makes vanilla runs less consistent than AE runs. The best three weapons in the game are Halberd Beam, Burst II, and Flak I (sometimes called the Holy Trinity). I'd be real curious to hear what Thomas, chewbacca, and other greats think the tier list looks like. Ions and missiles, however, remain mediocre.ДЄlso note that I'm a pretty good player (won with all gunships on hard), but I'm by no means the best. Your goal is to have at all times a loadout that can at least partially disable enemy weapons on your first volley, helping you avoid damage and buying you the time you need to disable other systems.ДЄlso, if you're running a boarding ship, weapon strengths sort of flip on their head, with bombs becoming your best friend and lasers/beams becoming relatively lackluster. Missiles, bombs, and ions are simply too slow, inconsistent, or ammo-dependent.

Beams can't miss, so they are by far the most consistent and controllable source of damage in the game. In general, the strongest gunship loadouts in FTL consists of consistent shield-stripping + beam weapons. Note that 'getting into' advanced edition is probably easier than sticking with vanilla - hacking is a broken system and hugely increases the consistency of your runs.

Ftl weapons tier list