So as I'm attempting to make a viable EMP weapon I notice that it's quite difficult to get a proper damage/size ratio going. After running some math I've found it's not actually possible to get an EMP weapon of similar mass, to disable a ship.
Example: Wisp drone has an engine that recovers 3699.4 energy per second. In order to beat that you would need 3700 damage per second.
42.6 mass drone -> 3699.4 e/sec
42.6 mass cannon -> 4260 damage/second
So you see the first example at low mass actually works. Which is fine and dandy, but take into account all the extra mass you need to power that cannon, as well as any defenses needed to protect it from being one shot by virtually anything. Suddenly that 42.6 mass cannon has become a 200 mass ship.
If you scale this up, the values become even more insane. Many many large scale ships will have reactors that regen 10 million+ /second. That kind of dps becomes vastly more useful as raw damage than a weapon that will only work for a few seconds, if at all.
You see the problem isn't damage directly, it's how reactors operate. Reactors work quickly and constantly, there's nothing that stops a reactor except for an outage, as it stands EMP's rarely cause outages, except in the ships trying to use them.
SO, here I see a problem, and here I have a solution;
Disruption/Outage effect - for X seconds target cannot recover any power, after which there is a cooldown for Y seconds before this may activate again.
Simple enough, once hit by an EMP you can't recover power for a few seconds, we'll say 3. Once this effect has passed, a timer begins where you won't be affected by it again for say, 20 seconds. That's 20 seconds of invulnerability against Emp weapons effect, vs 3 seconds where they can actually drain your power.
Before anyone says, woah! no power regen!? Taboooooo... consider the ease in which this can be implemented as well it's pros and cons;
Example: Wisp drone has an engine that recovers 3699.4 energy per second. In order to beat that you would need 3700 damage per second.
42.6 mass drone -> 3699.4 e/sec
42.6 mass cannon -> 4260 damage/second
So you see the first example at low mass actually works. Which is fine and dandy, but take into account all the extra mass you need to power that cannon, as well as any defenses needed to protect it from being one shot by virtually anything. Suddenly that 42.6 mass cannon has become a 200 mass ship.
If you scale this up, the values become even more insane. Many many large scale ships will have reactors that regen 10 million+ /second. That kind of dps becomes vastly more useful as raw damage than a weapon that will only work for a few seconds, if at all.
You see the problem isn't damage directly, it's how reactors operate. Reactors work quickly and constantly, there's nothing that stops a reactor except for an outage, as it stands EMP's rarely cause outages, except in the ships trying to use them.
SO, here I see a problem, and here I have a solution;
Disruption/Outage effect - for X seconds target cannot recover any power, after which there is a cooldown for Y seconds before this may activate again.
Simple enough, once hit by an EMP you can't recover power for a few seconds, we'll say 3. Once this effect has passed, a timer begins where you won't be affected by it again for say, 20 seconds. That's 20 seconds of invulnerability against Emp weapons effect, vs 3 seconds where they can actually drain your power.
Before anyone says, woah! no power regen!? Taboooooo... consider the ease in which this can be implemented as well it's pros and cons;
- There's already an outage effect
- There's already an icon that can be used for this
- Emps of all sizes would now pose a threat, while larger ones will drain more power than smaller ones during the length of the effect
- The effect cannot be spammed because of the inherent cooldown
- It does not replace damage, it merely adds a way for EMPs of all sizes to deal with reactors of all sizes, less than 100% effect weapons will still do damage.