Things You Never Use

    Edymnion

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    Okay, so how about a nice little discussion/listing of things in Starmade that you personally never use. Either because you consider it too weak, or too difficult. Aka, things that really should be looked at for a revamp.

    Power/Shield Drain: I don't use either of these for any reason. Power transfer I use in docked reactors, but the drain beams are completely worthless to me when I can stick EMP or ION onto actual weapons for much greater effect.

    Pulse: Not for primary, almost never for secondary. The long reload time and insane up front power cost makes it a poor choice for how I like to play. Especially since the way shield recharge works means you're better off having faster shots that prevent recharge from kicking in rather than one uber-decimating shot that, frankly, is likely to have most of it's power wasted. I will occasionally stick a X/pulse on a turret, but not often.

    X/Missile: For anything other than heatseekers. The shotgun effect is absolutely worthless on everything else. You have to be so close to have it do anything that at that point you might as well just get out and walk over to hug your opponent to death.

    Heavy Armor: Now, its a lie to say that I NEVER use it, but I only use it for spot reinforcements. And frankly, I use it so little that it might as well be a decorative block to me at this point, really. But then, I prefer to shield tank, not armor tank. If shields are down, I'm screwed anyway, anything with guns big enough to drop my shields on a size to size basis is going to tear through any kind of armor without noticing its there in the first place, so the increased mass just isn't worth it to me.
     
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    I really like using several Cannon/Pulse/Ion arrays in sequence, really good for taking down shields quickly I find. Usually one array has already reloaded by the time shields start regening. Not terribly useful for block damage though.

    As far what I don't use, I also don't use Drain weaponry and missile slaves, even for swarmers (personal taste more than effectiveness really). I'm also not big on Push/Pull/Stop weaponry (outside of Drone Launch).
     

    Edymnion

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    As far what I don't use, I also don't use Drain weaponry and missile slaves, even for swarmers (personal taste more than effectiveness really). I'm also not big on Push/Pull/Stop weaponry (outside of Drone Launch).
    I like them in theory, but not in practice.

    In theory, they should be GREAT for large ships to have stop beams to lock onto small fighters and hold them down while the actual turrets tear them to shreds, but in practice it seems that if you can have a stop beam powerful enough to actually lock a ship down, it would have been more effective to make it an actual weapon to blow them out of the sky with.

    I also personally don't use warheads. Partly because they're difficult to rig into anything approaching effectiveness, partly because of the fact I feel like them ignoring shields is just really damned cheesy and I refuse to use them on general principle.

    The very idea of just making a hundred warhead torpedoes that all launch at a titan and swiss cheesing it while it's shields are at full power just really bothers me.
     

    Ithirahad

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    • Warheads, because useless. They don't do enough damage to be of any real worth.
    • Shipyard build function. Would be awesome, until you realize that it's bugged and your turrets and docked entities are liable to randomly disappear. That bug has been at "release blocker" priority for several releases now, but obviously it isn't blocking them...
    • Shield- and power-supply beams on ships. Of course they're good for certain utility purposes like docked generators, but I haven't yet encountered a situation in which they're useful to have in your hotbar.
    • Missile/Pulse. In the age of point defense, it doesn't seem at all worth it to use these until missiles get an HP value.
    • Astronaut setting on BOBBY AI. Great against boarders, but... since when did anyone ever board anything anywhere anyhow?
     
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    AtraUnam

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    I also personally don't use warheads. Partly because they're difficult to rig into anything approaching effectiveness, partly because of the fact I feel like them ignoring shields is just really damned cheesy and I refuse to use them on general principle
    Bwahahahah warheads are even less useful than drain effects. 1 warhead won't even kill 1 hull block and slamming a million warhead cube into an isanth doesn't even disable it.

    Now for things I don't use:
    • Warheads for the reasons stated above.
    • Missiles/pulse and missile/missile as both are easily surpassed by a decent missile/beam setup.
    • Power/Shield drain beams because on the whole they are useless.
    • Beams for anything other than shield breaking or anti-fighter turrets.
     
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    Astronaut setting on BOBBY AI. Great against boarders, but... since when did anyone ever board anything anywhere anyhow?
    Well you could use them for planetary defense or to leave a nasty surprise for some sectors that people explore... Or for stations, people board stations and hopefully the NPC update will include them boarding you where you have dockers, e.g. USD's.
     

    Edymnion

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    • Beams for anything other than shield breaking or anti-fighter turrets.
    Side note, I like to put 1 block beam/cannon emitters in front of my cannon turrets. Its very difficult to actually see cannon fire, and since the AI can fire both weapons at the same time it acts like tracer rounds so I can see exactly where my turrets are aiming.
     
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    Side note, I like to put 1 block beam/cannon emitters in front of my cannon turrets. Its very difficult to actually see cannon fire, and since the AI can fire both weapons at the same time it acts like tracer rounds so I can see exactly where my turrets are aiming.
    That's... Actually pretty smart...
     
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    Blakpik

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    AstroTechnicians.

    They are capable of healing blocks with lasers...

    When are you ever going to use that? If you use it on another ship in a fight, it means you aren't fighting, and for what? So you can heal, maybe three blocks? It also means you have to HIT the damaged block of an ally ship, and like that's ever going to happen if you are both moving.
     

    DrTarDIS

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    I agree with astrotech being a waste of a block right now, I was envisioning a LOT more usefulness from it than it has been relegated to. I think astrotech will have to wait for "core imprinting" or whatever they're calling the saved blueprint in the core thingy they're planning. perhapse we can just feed it raw resources and it will "build" the damaged and missing blocks with them?

    momentum effects in general are "neat tricks" but rather understated in utility. it's easier to use push/stop-cannons than pull beams for manipulating objects in space. M/p/s was the best option for combat momentum last I checked, with everything else being beyond utility. Annoying that momentum effects bug out at sector borders too, makes a b/b/pull "rescue ship" for solar-stranded individuals even less useful than it should be, even in it's "niche". Could probably be (mostly)fixed by changing momentum from an instant-interval-inertia-burst to a 3-5 second *stacking* "effect over time". Momentum passives, conversely, are rather understated for their utility. Nothing like parking a 5million mass ship near a planet without lag-worries.


    Warheads...I've only CONSIDERED using them as a self-destruct system for drones or high-technology experimental craft. Combat effectiveness is nil, use as information denial is spotty at best. Very specific niche for core/faction-drilling (and theft of) stationary "unprotected" large ships. Needs same radius stack as pulse, same damage stack as capacitor efficiency, and/or basic/standard/advanced variants to be useful. Needs to be placeable/equippable by boarding players to enhance boarding meta without previous radius/damage buffs.

    Power/shield drain.....Useful for swarms of "knife fight" ships against larger prey. Theoretically over-powered for their niche-role of "swarms of tuna taking down a whale"......but overspecialized role and inability of current game state to provide ample opportunity for that role (small playerbase and problems with netcode) means "yeah,specialist equipment left to get dusty".

    missiles as a secondary...the special-ed of knife-fight ships. Too-high of a power cost with too-low an accuracy for too-low a damage. Theoretically useful for AMS, but since they all shoot the same pattern, and will NOT stagger-shoot without some interesting (and bad-for-you) power-engineering...their cooldown + powerdrain + inaccuracy + crappy spread = fundamentally broken, re-tweak to "fragments on impact"/"wider projectile" please.
     
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    Things I don't use:
    Light Rods
    Most decorative blocks (Excluding hull and lights and a couple others)
    Display Module (though I REALLY want to get into using them, I'm just very lazy)
     
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    Flowers, Trees, Cactusses? I GUESS you could use them to make your base look nice. Be it planetary or Starbase. Some Armor-colours. Like that pinkish-stuff. But I guess these parts are made for the interior decoration type ist pretty useful. But not my style.
     

    Gasboy

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    Things I don't use:
    Light Rods
    Most decorative blocks (Excluding hull and lights and a couple others)
    Display Module (though I REALLY want to get into using them, I'm just very lazy)
    Light rods are excellent for engine lighting effects.
    [DOUBLEPOST=1455190073,1455189898][/DOUBLEPOST]
    AstroTechnicians.

    They are capable of healing blocks with lasers...

    When are you ever going to use that? If you use it on another ship in a fight, it means you aren't fighting, and for what? So you can heal, maybe three blocks? It also means you have to HIT the damaged block of an ally ship, and like that's ever going to happen if you are both moving.
    Sure, they're not really useful in combat, but they are very handy for repairing after combat. You don't stick them on your main combat ship. Instead you make a small tender or maybe a turret on a station.
     
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    Flowers, Trees, Cactusses? I GUESS you could use them to make your base look nice. Be it planetary or Starbase. Some Armor-colours. Like that pinkish-stuff. But I guess these parts are made for the interior decoration type ist pretty useful. But not my style.
    You learn to make do with whatcha got at hand after your ship is turned to Swiss cheese, and you need to patch the hull up somehow.
     

    Gasboy

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    You learn to make do with whatcha got at hand after your ship is turned to Swiss cheese, and you need to patch the hull up somehow.
    Well, that only happens when you're in a constant state of conflict. If it's just a wham, bam, thank you ma'am kind of fight, you have downtime to patch your ship in. :P
     

    Edymnion

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    Light rods are excellent for engine lighting effects.
    And you can turn them off to have them become rebar/cables/table legs/etc for decorating purposes.
     

    Edymnion

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    Oh, something I never use.

    Stealth.

    If I can't make a klingon Bird of Prey or a romulan Warbird style cloaked ship, I'm not interested. I don't want some piddly little "reactor lines, thrusters, and cloaker" ship because the power requirements are so insane that you can't afford to even put basic hull on the ship and still get your perma-cloak to work.