Weapon discussion thread

[Rhyssia]

One shot with the 40 blocks the burst took about 1 second, it did closer to about 80-95K damage in one second.

Also check the 2nd edit.

-edit-
erm...
the 30 mass can punch through about 3 million shields

 

[Malacodor]

Who I wouldn't kill for that ability to... AMC : Beam : 25% EMP : 25% Ion

Use Ion until shields are down, then disconnect it and connect EMP instead.

 

[Alpha_Squad]

The UI is also wrong for the laser, it states that 75 damage/tick with a tick of 0.1 equates to 7.5 damage/second which probably has something to do with this outrageous damage. I'd write a report, but its way too late for me right now.

 

[Hanspeter Schnitzel]

I hope that it is more effecient against shields to use the ion effect than to just use the overdrive effect. Otherwise why would anyone use the ion effect?

 

[Alpha_Squad]

^It doesn't use additional energy.

Just tested it out, for AMC at 100% overdrive it deals just over double damage and 100% damage pulse deals 10X damage in a single burst. For laser at 100% overdrive it deals just over 6 times the damage and 100% damage pulse deal 20X the amount of ticks damage in a single burst/original amount of ticks in a single burst, which results in massive damage. Perfect for cloakers, who can quickly decloak and attack and they will usually kill.

Granted there is one massive disadvantage of the laser, it doesn't turn with the ship. Meaning in mutual combat situation the laser becomes marginally less effeceint then what experiments would have us believe, though a single tick from a laser deals 7 times more damage than its AMC counterpart.

I will only imagine this will be patched out next update, otherwise its back to the era of cloak or be dead.

 

[Keptick]

I hope that it is more effecient against shields to use the ion effect than to just use the overdrive effect. Otherwise why would anyone use the ion effect?

Because it doesn't take 6x the power.

 

[Lecic]

I think a major issue with beams is that they use very little or maybe even no power right now, so the overdrive costs next-to-nothing for outrageous damage.

Also, that ridiculous damage might be a bug. If it isn't, well, we have a serious problem with balancing.

 

[RedDragonflyxx]

Has anyone used Salvage-AMC-. at 100%? That thing is a monster! (2 layer checkerboard-inverted checkerboard with 10 blocks in each layer and the AMCs will chew 20-30 blocks in under 5 seconds

Edit: (!AMCs!) will chew 20-30 blocks in under 5 seconds... Whoops, sorry internet people, now where is your leader?

 

[Keptick]

Has anyone used Salvage-AMC-. at 100%? That thing is a monster! (2 layer checkerboard-inverted checkerboard with 10 blocks in each layer and the AMCs will chew 20-30 blocks in under 5 seconds

Sweet!!! I've always wanted to have better salvagers, normal ones are painfully slow. I also assume that you meant "the SALVAGE will chew 20-30 blocks in under 5 seconds"

 

[NuclearFun]

...
You would need a very specialized shield buster torpedo boat to actually use this "exploit" (i would also not think of this as an exploit, that would be a viable high risk high reward tactic)....

OK, after i have posted that i could not stop thinking about a very specialized shield buster torpedo boat (missile+pulse)... naturally i tried to build one... the problem is that if you want to go for reasonable damage the ship needs a ridiculous amount of power storage...

 

[lman94]

You do not need to degrade to insulting me, I am not being dense, you missed my entire point, I said...

"You cannot strip the shields out of a ship you are fighting, everybody will pack their ships with as many shields as they can."

I was not talking about editing my ship in combat. I was never even talking about editing ships at all. I only ever mentioned the shields on the target ship, and you just kept telling me to edit my ship... That is also a moot point as editing ships was never my point to begin with. The point I was making was that such a huge change would require rebalancing the entire power system as adding a new large power consumption would have an impact on every other system that uses power, including those new defensive systems (which require a TON of power) so your "Strip some out and replace with a defensive system." solution will not even work.

I am just going to quote exactly what I said, read it again, maybe slower this time and please don't respond telling me, yet again, to edit my ships.

Spoiler: Do I need to break it down further?

Problem: Packing ships full of shields creates hard to kill tank ships
Solution: Add power requirement to stop players from just spamming shields
Problem: Added Power consumption throws off balance of entire current system

this may have been stated to many times already, but maybe that is because people do not understand.
THIS IS ALPHA. SAYING THAT A CHANGE WILL BREAK EXISTING DESIGNS MEANS NOTING.
yes, adding power requirements for shields will change existing balance. that is the whole point. the goal of this change is to change the balance.

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

this may have been stated to many times already, but maybe that is because people do not understand.
THIS IS ALPHA. SAYING THAT A CHANGE WILL BREAK EXISTING DESIGNS MEANS NOTING.
yes, adding power requirements for shields will change existing balance. that is the whole point. the goal of this change is to change the balance.

I've stated many times that I am fully aware my ships will need to be refit that doesn't take away from having valid concerns about balance though and certain ship styles no longer even being valid. I also understand what Alpha means, I have been in this community for a very long time and am in fact now an official (Trial)Tester

The only point I was making was that adding power to shields is not a simple concept, it has repercussions with every system that uses power. It's a can of worms that I certainly wouldn't want to open myself. I never even once said I oppose the idea.

How many times do I have to quote this before people actually read it?

You cannot strip the shields out of a ship you are fighting, everybody will pack their ships with as many shields as they can. Will adding a constant power requirement to shields help this issue? Yes. Will this one change also affect the balance of every other aspect of the game that uses power? Yes. If shields required power all the other defensive options are now thrown out the window because power management becomes a nightmare as well as thrust and weapons. Adding power requirement to shields means a complete rebalance of the power system.

 

[Commodore]

OK, after i have posted that i could not stop thinking about a very specialized shield buster torpedo boat (missile+pulse)... naturally i tried to build one... the problem is that if you want to go for reasonable damage the ship needs a ridiculous amount of power storage...

You're not alone with that problem, it is probably the best setup for doing passes on a larger ship, but it just needs too much storage. I didn't think missiles would have the same power requirements to damage as AMCs.

 

[Alpha_Squad]

Laser/pulse combos are now precisely 1/10th as powerful as they were entirely due to ticks taking 10 times longer.

 

[Keptick]

You're not alone with that problem, it is probably the best setup for doing passes on a larger ship, but it just needs too much storage. I didn't think missiles would have the same power requirements to damage as AMCs.

Actually, a bigger ship would be the best fit for this kind of weapon due to the exponential nature of the power tanks mechanic. I do admit that with the linear thruster mechanic a smaller ship simply doesn't have the space to fit enough storage, a shame really...

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

Actually, a bigger ship would be the best fit for this kind of weapon due to the exponential nature of the power tanks mechanic. I do admit that with the linear thruster mechanic a smaller ship simply doesn't have the space to fit enough storage, a shame really...

You'll just have to tune your missiles to fire just under the max power of a small ship without tanks. One of Raibens ship a day challenge a little while ago was to build a bomber, I already started to tweak that ship with more power tanks to be able to fire the on board missiles.

 

[Alpha_Squad]

Don't remember what else I had written in the last four days, but something something Laser with missile slaves is confirmed for being broken. I think I also mentioned AMCs being good for piercing shots that go to the core of the ship with a decent fire rate.

 

[Hanspeter Schnitzel]

I'm playing around some with the weapon systems and the effect. The ion effect is useless as of now, isn't it? I mean, yeah, it doubles your damage against shields and lowers your damage against hull alot (If you have it on a 100% support), so you can make specialized anti-shield weapons but, instead of adding the ion effect, you might as well add more weapons. Then you also do double the damage, but against shields and hull.

Or.. wait... do effects raise the power consumption of weapons? I hope they do not! If they would not they would make ionizing weapons extremely important to make weapons capable of destroying shields without having to add more power-heavy weapon blocks!

EDIT: Quick test: In the weapon-information tab it doesn't say the power consumption of the array rises, no matter if the effect is attached or not. :D

 

[MrFURB]

I'm playing around some with the weapon systems and the effect. The ion effect is useless as of now, isn't it? I mean, yeah, it doubles your damage against shields and lowers your damage against hull alot (If you have it on a 100% support), so you can make specialized anti-shield weapons but, instead of adding the ion effect, you might as well add more weapons. Then you also do double the damage, but against shields and hull.

Or.. wait... do effects raise the power consumption of weapons? I hope they do not! If they would not they would make ionizing weapons extremely important to make weapons capable of destroying shields without having to add more power-heavy weapon blocks!

EDIT: Quick test: In the weapon-information tab it doesn't say the power consumption of the array rises, no matter if the effect is attached or not. :D

It doesn't matter if the blocks are weapon, support, or effect blocks, every block in a weapon group adds to the weapon's total damage output. A 1/1/1 AMC/AMC/Ion will deal as much base damage as 3 AMC blocks.

 

[Hanspeter Schnitzel]

Yeah, but the ion blocks do not use power, unlike extra weapon blocks. Which means that a weapon using effects is more effecient then one using raw block-firepower.