A Simple Weapons Effect Question

[splatthecat]

OK, I am planning to build an automated siege platform to take on pirate stations and will set up a number of beams to sit there and pound the station.

Taking the Ion supported beam as an example, am I correct in thinking that at 100% support, it does 0 physical damage? So if the station has no shields left, this beam is essentially redundant? If I have sufficient power to continue operating the beam, would it be better to trade off some of the ion effect and let the beam continue to do some damage or would this simply not be worth the energy consumption? I'm thinking 75-80% support to give it some physical damage.

As the platform will be designed to be operated remotely, I could switch off or off individual beams while monitoring their effectiveness from a remote, maybe even cloaked platform.

 

[AtraUnam]

You are correct that ion reduces physical damage, removing it completely at 100%
How much you want to reduce your ion by depends on what blocks you want to kill and how much damage the beam does per tick.

 

[splatthecat]

You are correct that ion reduces physical damage, removing it completely at 100%
How much you want to reduce your ion by depends on what blocks you want to kill and how much damage the beam does per tick.

I'm building an remotely operated platform and I simply wanted to be as efficient with power as possible.

When the target shields were depleted, I wanted the beam to be causing some physical damage rather than simply wasting energy depleting already depleted shields. An EMP beam will be used in conjunction to deplete power but also have a small amount of physical damage. Once the shields and power are depleted or at least critically damaged, the third beam will be activated which will be purely physical damage. Maybe piercing effect to rip the structure to bits.

This will be a stand alone unit with a remote "spotter" ship that will have remote triggers for the three weapons and be deployed as part of a larger assault fleet.

 

[Nickizzy]

OK, I am planning to build an automated siege platform to take on pirate stations and will set up a number of beams to sit there and pound the station.

Taking the Ion supported beam as an example, am I correct in thinking that at 100% support, it does 0 physical damage? So if the station has no shields left, this beam is essentially redundant? If I have sufficient power to continue operating the beam, would it be better to trade off some of the ion effect and let the beam continue to do some damage or would this simply not be worth the energy consumption? I'm thinking 75-80% support to give it some physical damage.

As the platform will be designed to be operated remotely, I could switch off or off individual beams while monitoring their effectiveness from a remote, maybe even cloaked platform.

I might just have one two beams, one that always does explosive physical and one that you switch between ion and emp.

 

[splatthecat]

I might just have one two beams, one that always does explosive physical and one that you switch between ion and emp.

That is worth a thought. Again I thought that maybe there would be power inefficiencies by having a physical damage weapon when the ion would reduce the shields quicker.

If the overall power of the weapon was insufficient to cause both physical AND shield damage in one beam, I thought it would be easier to split all three functions, but switching ion and emp beams would cause the same type of damage to the target.

As I said above, this is planned to be a support weapon rather than an out and out assault ship. Fighters would provide CAP against enemy fighters and a number of dedicated assault ships would be able to attack from multiple sides.

Having the power draining capacity would, in theory keep any turrets at bay that had insufficient on board power.

 

[jayman38]

You could put in 90% (or 80% or 99% or...) ion effect, leaving the remainder as regular damage that can still damage blocks.

You'll probably want a weapon that has at least 200 points of regular damage, to be able to do some small bit of damage through armor effects, after the shields are down. Actually, you might want something more like 5000 points of regular damage, to be sure you can wipe out an entire advanced armor block per hit, when the shields are down.

So if you use 80% ion on top of a 5000 point regular damage hit, you are talking about a beam that hits for 25k + about 20k (?) extra shield damage per tick, or a cannon that hits for 25k + 20k (?) extra shield damage per shot. YMMV

 

[Nickizzy]

power inefficiencies

It might be worth thinking about using the dreaded power drain beams instead of emp. Pirates don't have massive regen rates and that would certainly help any power problems you have.

 

[StarWars1981]

Roll it into three - one power drain beam as above, and two assault beams. Just standard, no ion effect, maybe overdrive or explosive, so they can multitask no matter what happens.

 

[_ArkAngel_]

My solution to this problem: Put a daughter transporter ship inside the siege platform so you can transport to it without taking your own shields down. If it's not moving when you undock the daughter ship, it's not much of a problem. You can create a remote for undocking the transporter bay. Then actually reconfigure the support computers at the appropriate times.

I hate having hundreds of Beam modules not contributing to the fight. And I also love mid-battle engineering!