Ion vs Overdrive

[Lecic]

I'm building a ship with a large laser cannon designed to do heavy run&gun damage to a bigger ship. It flies at high speeds towards the enemy ship, fires a single powerful attack, and then flies off quickly, at which point a larger allied ship will come and finish off the now weakened enemy with fewer risks.

I'm wondering whether I should use the Ion effect or the Overdrive effect to deal as much damage as possible. I know Overdrive can get x3 damage, but how much of a damage bonus can Ion get?

 

[karkinosz]

Ion merely increases shield damage while decreasing block damage by a proportionate amount. However a laser can only hit one block with its damage so it only needs to do enough hull damage to kill hardened hull. Really what you want to do is compare energy economy and damage for both options for your ship size. The larger the weapon the more ion you can go but if you can manage to get enough energy for 2x damage overdrive then the ion bonus will be less regardless since the ion cannot do more than x2 shield damage.

TLDR Overdrive if you have the energy for it. Ion with enough hull damage left to kill hardened hull otherwise.

 

[BDLS]

Last time I played, there was no reason to use Ion with Beams when Overdrive exists, since the energy requirements for beams are close to nil anyways.

 

[Rhyssia]

as of .159 OverDrive > Ion (Stop on turrets also seems retardedly effective)

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

If you use overdrive don't be surprised when this ship can no longer fire the beams when the beam power consumption bug finally gets fixed.

 

[Rhyssia]

But OP states that the purpose of the Beam, is more of a first strike and "gtfo" type of design. So as long as the Power Storage is great enough to fire the Overdrive beam, it shouldn't be an issue. (Without considering other unknown factors such as the RoF vs Energy Recharge. Also, docked ships can act like generators to break the 1mil soft cap.)

 

[BDLS]

If you use overdrive don't be surprised when this ship can no longer fire the beams when the beam power consumption bug finally gets fixed.

Is it actually a bug? It's been known about since v.15 dropped and hasn't been addressed, when it's an easy config change. Maybe it's little energy on purpose?

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

Is it actually a bug? It's been known about since v.15 dropped and hasn't been addressed, when it's an easy config change. Maybe it's little energy on purpose?

It is most definitely a bug and you can tell by how big of a difference there is between cannons and lasers

"The Power consumed was 50 and the damage dealt was 200. That's .25E per 1DMG. The current power:dmg ratio for every other gun (afaik) is 10E per 1DMG making laser power consumption 40 times more efficient than any other weapon in the game."

 

[Unnamed25]

And the "fun" thing is that on real life it should be way more inefficient compared to cannons because of energy lost as heat

 

[Cudgeon Kurosaki]

Crap, now I need to fix up my retarded Overdrive Pulse Beam now.

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

Crap, now I need to fix up my retarded Overdrive Pulse Beam now.

Yeah I bet a lot of people will have to fix their beams.

Bug #498

• Status changed from In Progress to Resolved

 

[Comr4de]

Yeah I bet a lot of people will have to fix their beams.

Bug #498

• Status changed from In Progress to Resolved

I haven't noticed much of a change lol are you sure you fixed it

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

I haven't noticed much of a change lol are you sure you fixed it

It's not fixed yet, they went from taking about 1/40th the power they should to about 1/10th so they are still way more efficient than cannons.

 

[Comr4de]

"Resolved" usually means that the issue is fixed. My mistake.

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

"Resolved" usually means that the issue is fixed. My mistake.

I'm the tester on that issue, Schema sent it back resolved, I tested it and found it to not be the case so it was sent back in for re-evaluation.