Best weapon combination for pirates

[wagfeliz]

I know that there is some threads about this already, but since the weapons and effects had change, I fell those old threads dont apply anymore.
I used to use mix combo of missiles with some cannons/cannons to kill it, but it seems now missiles are complete useless and I am having hard time to hit small targets with cannons.
There is any use full combo for cannon/cannon right now for pirates ?
Like combo with stop effect or pull effect or something ?

 

[DeltaEpsilon7787]

Stop effect is broken as shit, I already tried that. Use stop effect only with cannons, as those seem to never fail.
I even filled a form for that: T1128 Stop effect doesn't work reliably if used in conjunction with damage beam or missiles
...
and got rejected.

 

[Edymnion]

Missiles don't work so great for pirates anymore because they spent so long being completely OP that we all learned to cover our ships in PDTs (Point Defense Turrets) that can shoot down any missile long before they reach us.

Cannons are still great choices for pirates, if you mean actual AI controlled pirates and not just Fighters. Otherwise, they're better off relegated to turrets on larger ships. Still need good forward facing cannons for surgical strikes and things to do while the turrets finish stuff off, but they're not going to be your main line of offense.

 

[Master_Artificer]

EMP's

Oh look pirates. Oh look I am out of power, cant maneuver, fire guns, or warp out.

Welp GG.

 

[wagfeliz]

Stop effect is broken as shit, I already tried that. Use stop effect only with cannons, as those seem to never fail.
I even filled a form for that: T1128 Stop effect doesn't work reliably if used in conjunction with damage beam or missiles
...
and got rejected.

But do they work well with cannons/cannons ? Worth a try ?
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EMP's

Oh look pirates. Oh look I am out of power, cant maneuver, fire guns, or warp out.

Welp GG.

EMP will stop the target ship and make it easy to kill ? Really ?

 

[jayman38]

I have heard that AI-driven missile turrets with beam secondaries for lock-on functionality still work great.

 

[Edymnion]

EMP will stop the target ship and make it easy to kill ? Really ?

EMP damages power supplies. A ship with no power can't use their engines, charge their shields, or fire their weapons.

Many, if not most people don't over-build ships with large power buffers. They usually build it with enough power to be able to fly and shoot and recharge shields and call it good. An enemy ship with lots of EMP weapons chew into the target's power reserve faster than they can restore it, which can completely shut them down.

I actually have both a power drain and a shield drain beam on my drone fighters for that very reason. I like death by a thousand cuts, and having lots of drone ships constantly sucking down their shields and power while chewing into the hull with cannon fire makes me happy.

 

[wagfeliz]

EMP damages power supplies. A ship with no power can't use their engines, charge their shields, or fire their weapons.

Many, if not most people don't over-build ships with large power buffers. They usually build it with enough power to be able to fly and shoot and recharge shields and call it good. An enemy ship with lots of EMP weapons chew into the target's power reserve faster than they can restore it, which can completely shut them down.

I actually have both a power drain and a shield drain beam on my drone fighters for that very reason. I like death by a thousand cuts, and having lots of drone ships constantly sucking down their shields and power while chewing into the hull with cannon fire makes me happy.

Interesting. My ship currently have an big ammount of shield (arround 550k), turrets anti missiles, and my main weapon is an cannon/cannon at 100%, what % do you recommend for power drain effect on this cannons ? Something like 50% ?

 

[Tchey]

I like to have a Cannon 100% / Cannon 70% / Ion 30% so i can fast fire something to eat shields and when shield is down i can keep firing to eat material.

My turrets are Beam / something mostly.

Like "everyone", i also have a few antimissiles.

I like to have one big huge slow missile/pulse/explosion to make holes, sets to fire with a swarm of fake small missiles all around.

I like also heat missiles, i find them usefull to kill turrets and to keep everyone busy.

And one more slow Beam weapon to make small all to target the Faction bloc of stations, without destroying it too much.

 

[Master_Artificer]

Interesting. My ship currently have an big ammount of shield (arround 550k), turrets anti missiles, and my main weapon is an cannon/cannon at 100%, what % do you recommend for power drain effect on this cannons ? Something like 50% ?

Most people think 100% is good, but actually causing damage and forcing energy expenditure on the recharge is even better. I would say go for 2 million power drain per second, at around 85-90% effect. But it is also good to test to see how much damage you want to have left over.
Do you want to still be able to break armor blocks? What type?

From personal experiences in blood and steel my emp ship almost backfired when my energy suppression stopped because I had, well, shot clear through the ship.

I had stop turrets as well which really complemented the emp effects.

 

[Edymnion]

Interesting. My ship currently have an big ammount of shield (arround 550k), turrets anti missiles, and my main weapon is an cannon/cannon at 100%, what % do you recommend for power drain effect on this cannons ? Something like 50% ?

Well thats up to you.

At 100% efficiency, an EMP weapon does no damage at all to blocks, but deals 20x damage to power. So if each cannon shot did 100 damage normally and you made it full on EMP, they'd do 2,000 damage to the target's energy reserves.

Downside is, I believe, that the target's shields have to be down before EMP weapons actually take effect (somebody correct me if I'm wrong here). The drain beams require more power to fire and are less versatile (can't do any actual damage), but can suck power/shields while the target's shields are up. Drain beams also can't use weapon slaves, so EMP/ION weapon systems can be made constant fire for a steady drain, while drain beams are going to be spikey as they reload.

Personally, for ships I actually pilot, I prefer to put power drain beams on turrets. Drones can fire multiple weapons at the same time, so they can shoot actual weapons while also firing the drain beams, so thats great. Human pilots can only fire one thing at a time (well, you could logic one, but then you can only aim it by gross ship movement), and I'd rather have my "I'm bored waiting on the turrets to finish things off" toys be pure damage.

 

[Master_Artificer]

Downside is, I believe, that the target's shields have to be down before EMP weapons actually take effect (somebody correct me if I'm wrong here).

OBJECTION!!!

I mean, er, CORRECTION!

The wiki is bullshit, they do not require shields to be down. Use notepad++ (free) to view the configs and see what the game says, as well as in game testing to find out what the behavior is.


Speaking of testing, beam+cannon+stop works... at about half the effecency.
I believe this to be the fact that beam+cannon has a tick rate of one fifth a second, while cannons have one tenth.

Which means that stop is probably output controlled more than strength of stop per beam/bullet.
I should test if 100 tubes of 10 is stronger than 10 tubes of 100. My prediction is yes.

 

[wagfeliz]

Most people think 100% is good, but actually causing damage and forcing energy expenditure on the recharge is even better. I would say go for 2 million power drain per second, at around 85-90% effect. But it is also good to test to see how much damage you want to have left over.
Do you want to still be able to break armor blocks? What type?

From personal experiences in blood and steel my emp ship almost backfired when my energy suppression stopped because I had, well, shot clear through the ship.

I had stop turrets as well which really complemented the emp effects.

The pirates on most servers are heavenly armored thanked, with only a few shield, but still with some, my cannons/cannons kill it very fast, but its hard to aim to the smaller ships.

I am still confused on what to go, EMP seens to do nothing at all if the target have some shield left, Drain needs to be in an separated weapon so it may be better to have one specialized stop effect cannon instead ? Then when the target is stooped I just swap to the cannon / cannon and finish it ?

I could also change my turrets to do Energy Drain, since missiles are doing nothing anymore I guess I dont need anti-missiles anymore... But they seens to miss almost every shoot so I am not sure if this is effective...

What do you guys think ?

 

[Edymnion]

OBJECTION!!!

I mean, er, CORRECTION!

Ah, good to know. I may have to switch some builds around then!

 

[wagfeliz]

OBJECTION!!!

I mean, er, CORRECTION!

The wiki is bullshit, they do not require shields to be down. Use notepad++ (free) to view the configs and see what the game says, as well as in game testing to find out what the behavior is.


Speaking of testing, beam+cannon+stop works... at about half the effecency.
I believe this to be the fact that beam+cannon has a tick rate of one fifth a second, while cannons have one tenth.

Which means that stop is probably output controlled more than strength of stop per beam/bullet.
I should test if 100 tubes of 10 is stronger than 10 tubes of 100. My prediction is yes.

Thats very good tip, I am thinking on two weapons, one beam+cannon+stops like you said, to stop the target, then another weapon cannon/cannon to destroy shield/blocks.

I was thinking about the energy draim or EMP and about the usability of this on servers where the inertia is off, I think it will be useless on this kind of servers since your targeting will not stop at all even if it has no energy...

 

[Master_Artificer]

Thats very good tip, I am thinking on two weapons, one beam+cannon+stops like you said, to stop the target, then another weapon cannon/cannon to destroy shield/blocks.

I was thinking about the energy draim or EMP and about the usability of this on servers where the inertia is off, I think it will be useless on this kind of servers since your targeting will not stop at all even if it has no energy...

Be warned that beam cannon has about half the stopping power of cannon cannon.
Then again, it has hitscan going for it.

 

[StormWing0]

hmm My favorite EMP Combos:

Missile/Beam/EMP
Beam/Cannon/EMP
Pulse/Beam/EMP (For Pointblank Range )

 

[wagfeliz]

Guys, I tested the cannon/cannon/stop effect + cannon/cannon and it works pretty well, I keep swapping from stop and damage weapons to keep the target in line and its surprising very effective.
Because I need to keep swapping it I had the idea to use towers shooting the stop effect as well , it works for a few seconds until the pirates AI decide to destroy all my towers before targeting me again ! It seems the pirates hate being stopped by towers...
What do you guys use on towers ? Do anyone had the same experience from me ?

 

[Edymnion]

Guys, I tested the cannon/cannon/stop effect + cannon/cannon and it works pretty well, I keep swapping from stop and damage weapons to keep the target in line and its surprising very effective.
Because I need to keep swapping it I had the idea to use towers shooting the stop effect as well , it works for a few seconds until the pirates AI decide to destroy all my towers before targeting me again ! It seems the pirates hate being stopped by towers...
What do you guys use on towers ? Do anyone had the same experience from me ?

By towers, do you mean turrets?

I usually just make sure I have so many shields and enough recharge that they never are able to directly hit my turrets.