Power and shield drain as weapons

[Nickizzy]

This may take a while, or it may not.

Has anyone ever made an anti-shield system that has shield drain? It seems like a really good idea for me right now. That and power drain would be quite effective sometimes. Shield drain would be able to heal your ship while damaging theirs, so a smaller frigate could focus more on caps and have their anti-shield system be shield drain(low on shield? Pop by the enemy titain!). Power drain wouod have a significant effect on any ship, the power recharge is usually lower than the damage you can do. Anyone ever done anything like that?

 

[Sgtwisky]

no option for "no to both"?

As for myself I've never used those options. I've considered them, but never tried. I think part of it is you need to design the ship with these weapons in mind, rather then "Conventional" munitions. I have considered having some MDP's (Mobile Defense Platforms) like this one: Mobile Defense Platform: Turret Ball
Which are made mostly of power/shield drain systems. The idea being I can then Commandeer all the ships that try to attack, and get many more resources and/or ships.

But as for actually using these systems... Some how I always focus on firepower instead.

 

[Keptick]

Shield drain can be incredibly potent, as it replenishes your shields while it drains the enemy (making you practically unkillable while doing so if your array is powerful enough). However, it's not very useful past the shield stage, and has very short range.

Power drain is useless, since it needs to hit power blocks (capacitor or reactors) to be effective.

 

[Sgtwisky]

Didn't realize power drain had to hit reactors or caps... would be nice if they could hit hull/other systems ect. for a reduced efficiency. Who builds ships with the power lines on the outside to be targeted? lol.

 

[NeonSturm]

Shield drain might be useful on fighters that stick close to the target.

If not useful by their stats alone, they could be "shorter-ranged but more efficient" alternatives for most ion-effect weaponry.

About short-ranged weaponry:
Once I thought, they should require a significant amount of power, so that you can stockpile their ammo by power-usage when you aim at a different target.
But then this would leverage efficiency of turrets vs front-mounted weapons which might make gigantism even more infinitely useful.

Short ranged being more efficient is always to be seen as offensive choice, because needs the target to build against it to be effective against it.

 

[Keptick]

Didn't realize power drain had to hit reactors or caps... would be nice if they could hit hull/other systems ect. for a reduced efficiency. Who builds ships with the power lines on the outside to be targeted? lol.

That's how it currently works. But from what I remember the reduction in efficiency just makes it not worth it. EMP effect on weapons is MUCH more effective.

 

[Sgtwisky]

Hum.... gonna have to "Test" some EMP weapons then. As I imagine, you could do some serious damage do some ships with them. Thinking of the ships that have just enough regeneration to power their weapons and fly at the same time.

 

[Master_Artificer]

Power drain is useless, since it needs to hit power blocks (capacitor or reactors) to be effective.

Based on how I understand starmade works, I am 99.999% sure that this is complete bollocks. Time to test.

 

[jstenholt]

I maintain that they should be effect modules instead. I've got a thread on here somewhere about converting all the utility systems into effect modules: shield supply, shield drain, power supply, power drain, cloak, jammer, repair. Seems to me that's the real way forward with utility.

 

[Master_Artificer]

as you can see, me hitting the standard armor of the battery of fully charged capacitors causes energy drain keptick
(so please don't go spreading around ridiculous bogus information like that )


And i ALSO have a neat little graphic showing how drain beams ignore ion effect and thus can deal the same amount of damage that normal weapons require 2.5x more damage to cause equivalent shield damage.

However, testing also shows that an equal amount of beam+ion effect still has a greater DPS than the drain beam against ion hardened shields...
So is their still a use for them?


Of course! While ion beams still deal more damage, and it seems attaching slaved secondaries to the shield drain might actually be adversely effecting its potential vs an equal amount of unslaved modules (more testing needed), you are still stealing the enemies shields.
And they need to effectively shoot through their own shields to start to kill you. And that's why I love the shield drain.
[DOUBLEPOST=1455080188,1455079189][/DOUBLEPOST]Also, a further test:

Hitting EITHER the power capacitors OR the standard armor (and angled so their were no power caps behind it just in case) produced the EXACT SAME amount of energy drain on the target.
In short, it does not care about what blocks you may be targeting, but if you were able to hit at all.

(things are in caps so you can skim it and get the jist of things without reading it all).

 

[StormWing0]

as you can see, me hitting the standard armor of the battery of fully charged capacitors causes energy drain keptick
(so please don't go spreading around ridiculous bogus information like that )


And i ALSO have a neat little graphic showing how drain beams ignore ion effect and thus can deal the same amount of damage that normal weapons require 2.5x more damage to cause equivalent shield damage.

However, testing also shows that an equal amount of beam+ion effect still has a greater DPS than the drain beam against ion hardened shields...
So is their still a use for them?


Of course! While ion beams still deal more damage, and it seems attaching slaved secondaries to the shield drain might actually be adversely effecting its potential vs an equal amount of unslaved modules (more testing needed), you are still stealing the enemies shields.
And they need to effectively shoot through their own shields to start to kill you. And that's why I love the shield drain.
[DOUBLEPOST=1455080188,1455079189][/DOUBLEPOST]Also, a further test:

Hitting EITHER the power capacitors OR the standard armor (and angled so their were no power caps behind it just in case) produced the EXACT SAME amount of energy drain on the target.
In short, it does not care about what blocks you may be targeting, but if you were able to hit at all.

(things are in caps so you can skim it and get the jist of things without reading it all).

Known this for a while and was wondering when someone would get sick of the misconception and nuke people for it. Power and shield drain beams only have to hit the entity in question and not a specific block on it. Got some Shield and power draining drones I use to just screw with people and it gets interesting seeing ships and stations go without power or shields and try to kill an immortal ship or drone fleet parked nearby.

 

[Master_Artificer]

Known this for a while and was wondering when someone would get sick of the misconception and nuke people for it. Power and shield drain beams only have to hit the entity in question and not a specific block on it. Got some Shield and power draining drones I use to just screw with people and it gets interesting seeing ships and stations go without power or shields and try to kill an immortal ship or drone fleet parked nearby.

Was about to say "you have to logic fire" the shield and energy drain/supplies, but I guess I should test that while I am at it!
[DOUBLEPOST=1455082147,1455080679][/DOUBLEPOST]

Okay I just stuck a power drain, a shield drain, and a copy of them with cannon slave inside a stock turret body to see if that makes a difference.

It wasn't shooting so I stuck more power on top just in case, but it was still not shooting.
Then i decided to spin around to see if it was tracking the target or if the ai was having issues and well....


Maybe turrets are not the best idea to use on a ship right now. It is targeting a stationary object and the base is slowly rotating (compressing the gif seems to make it speed up) but look at that fail...
LOL

Also ai cannot use support beams still, need to logic them on and off still.

 

[Edymnion]

Nope, I don't use either. Ion and EMP tertiaries on real weapons tend to be much more useful, and I do make liberal use of those.

 

[Keptick]

Hitting EITHER the power capacitors OR the standard armor (and angled so their were no power caps behind it just in case) produced the EXACT SAME amount of energy drain on the target.
In short, it does not care about what blocks you may be targeting, but if you were able to hit at all.

I stand corrected, thanks for actually testing it. It used to be where they'd only drain a fraction of the power when not hitting power blocks (which made them freaking useless), I'm glad to head that it's been changed (stealth change -_- ).

 

[NeonSturm]

If the range is lower and the damage+heal greater, it just tells that they are good on forward-facing weapons or offensive turrets (on agile ships to detach weapon aim from move direction).
Defensive turrets on slow turning ships should have longer ranged weapons to not be out-ranged and allow for more space to position yourself.


So any test has to be mainly for Fighters (or turrets vs stupid AI targets) exclusively.
Also, you shouldn't post test results with ion effect modules if you didn't test it on all test subjects – it creates a bias for reliable choices.