Beam / Beam penalty mechanic.

[MrGrey1]

I'm all for having a Beam / Beam super weapon with a caveat, however I think the shields completely dropping as they do now is a pretty weak mechanic. With shields being so vital to defense compared to armour the situations where it would become an attractive option are pretty much non-existent as far as I can see?
In a 1v1 or pvp situation, dropping your shields for 10 seconds I would have thought would amount to suicide. In a situation where you're doing a finishing shot on a station or ship you're risking holes in your precious ship for a faster kill which also doesn't make much sense, the alternative is to keep firing with conventional weapons and not risk needing to patch afterwards... no contest as far as I'm concerned.

So what is the actual intended use case of a B/B death weapon with shield drop? When would anyone actually want to use it?
The only situation I can really think of that I'd want to use it would be for a bunch of small disposable drones with no shields that pack a really big punch for their size. That's not really a 'super weapon' type scenario though, more exploitative IMO. Other then that I can't think of a situation where its use out ways the risk of getting caught with your shields down. I know my play style and pvp experience is pretty limited so am I missing a situation where it'd be an advantage to use?

I'd like to suggest that instead of a complete shield drop, the B/B weapon would prevent other systems drawing power from the ship. So thrust stops working, all other weapons stop firing and shields stop charging but do not drop completely while the B/B charges and fires. That way you can still aim but you are otherwise helpless while the weapon powers up. You have to way up trying to win a battle with conventional weapons or take a risk on one big shot. That to me would be a much more useful mechanic that'd I'd actually consider using. As it is now B/B is just not an option... Thoughts?

 

[kiddan]

B/B should certainly shut down lower priority internals rather than specifically shields. Shields should go down if you've set them to a lower priority, but otherwise it could be thrust, other weapons, mass enhancers, etc. The player should choose what goes down first, but only through the power priority window we already have.

 

[aceface]

I think its alright because its pretty damn powerful. Maybe a strategy would be to focus on armour tank if using beam beam?

 

[God mode]

You can charge beam/beam while cloaked, so it makes for a good stealth alpha weapon. That's about it besides drones and some exploits. Not a fun mechanic.

That being said, I wouldn't discount armor too much since the goal seems to be to make it a viable alternative to shields. If the repair beam wasn't implemented so poorly that would help a lot, too.

 

[Lone_Puppy]

All I would use it for is in an expendable way, where the ship is built around the use of the super beam weapon.
I can't see a practical reason for adding it to a ship I would use for multipurpose.

My strategy for it's use would be a fleet of death beam ships to attack bigger ships to soften and cripple them for smaller ships to finish off.
All the while having separate defense ships in the same fleet with AMS and anything else to limit attack damage. Keeping them in fleet formation would maximize the defense I reckon. Although, I don't remember seeing an attack formation option. Although, I don't think you can attack in formation can you? Something to add to fleet commands maybe.

 

[Dr. Whammy]

My experiences with Beam/Beam:
- I like the armor/block penetration. Given enough size, this thing cuts through armor like paper.
- It sacrifices AOE/acid damage effect for penetration; somewhat limiting its effectiveness against systems.
- It got substantially worse anti-shield performance than cannon/beam weapons of equal size and ratios.
- I don't particularly like the fact that I can't fire partial charge and that I HAVE to fire it after fully charged.

My recommendations for the weapon itself:
- Allow firing at partial charge and allow holding a full charge.
- Increase AOE/acid damage effect and decrease penetration. Alternately, allow them to be changed via array output thickness.

My recommendations for the penalties associated with charging the weapon.
- Disable shield recharge. Your shields will stay up but will slowly discharge as per the normal shield mechanic
- Disable jump drives and inhibitors. Cut thrust to 50% power.
- Disable auto-charge on all chamber effects. Firing a partial charge will not interrupt your chamber effects. Otherwise you'll lose constant/permanent chamber effects like cloaking, jamming or scanning for roughly 2-3 seconds if you wait for the beam to fully charge.

Regarding armor tanking:
Unless your server has ridiculously high mining bonuses to the point that everyone has Fertikeen pouring out of their ears, I don't see this as an effective strategy. Sure; you could pile on the advanced armor like it's on a Black Friday discount sale, but even a small Cannon/Beam weapon can cut through thick armor.

...But that's ok. There should be more to fighting than just tanking and raw attrition.

 

[aceface]

Regarding armor tanking:
Unless your server has ridiculously high mining bonuses to the point that everyone has Fertikeen pouring out of their ears, I don't see this as an effective strategy. Sure; you could pile on the advanced armor like it's on a Black Friday discount sale, but even a small Cannon/Beam weapon can cut through thick armor.

nahh I use multiplated adv armor on 100ks and its no big issue on vanilla settings, you just need a big miner and to mine in the middle belts :P

 

[Dr. Whammy]

nahh I use multiplated adv armor on 100ks and its no big issue on vanilla settings, you just need a big miner and to mine in the middle belts :P

Mind if I ask how thick you stack your armor?

Also; what's 100KS? I'm not familiar with that acronym.

 

[aceface]

Mind if I ask how thick you stack your armor?

Also; what's 100KS? I'm not familiar with that acronym.

100K mass, its about 3-4 blocks on average sometimes bigger sometimes smaller, this one in particular.
https://starmadedock.net/content/amarr-khanid-omen.7125/

 

[Dr. Whammy]

100K mass, its about 3-4 blocks on average sometimes bigger sometimes smaller, this one in particular.
https://starmadedock.net/content/amarr-khanid-omen.7125/

Das Omen!

Looks nice. In your experience, is 2-4 blocks of adv. armor is enough to stop most incoming fire?

I find armor to be an appealing choice but I'm not a fan of the loss of mobility that comes with it. I also find that most decent missiles will strip through between 2-5 layers of adv armor. Also, until Schine implements "armor regeneration" like on EVE or fixes the Astro-tech (get to work, you guys! ), that armor is gone permanently once it's been hit.

Do you find armor tanking more effective than shield tanking?

 

[MrGrey1]

You can charge beam/beam while cloaked, so it makes for a good stealth alpha weapon. That's about it besides drones and some exploits. Not a fun mechanic..

Hadn't thought of that. Considering the low power requirments of B/B that could be really nasty. Hmmm, now I need to build a stealth doom beam.

 

[NeonSturm]

I think BB is intended for "internal undockable ships". 'nough said =)

For case you don't know what I mean, lemme explain that:

You have a 23x15x31 box with external decorations such as wings, which you call ship.

Within that, you have a 15x7x15 - or similarly sized - box which you call BB-super-weapon.
You undock that BB-super-weapon, fire it, dock or wait until debuff disappears and dock it again.

To protect it from external influences, use rail rotator doors to open that precious 3x3 hole through which it fires.

GG ... ?​

[doublepost=1546852390,1546851850][/doublepost]About armor mechanics:
I'd like to see shots penetrate before a permanent loss on armor. Permanent loss on systems may occur earlier.

Mass may be still there - raw mats not vanishing.
But in a configuration unusable as armor and required to run through a factory once more.


How about: Hull = basic.
Armor = The real one.
Adv. Armor = re-appears on reboot, a bit stronger.

 

[aceface]

Das Omen!

Looks nice. In your experience, is 2-4 blocks of adv. armor is enough to stop most incoming fire?

I find armor to be an appealing choice but I'm not a fan of the loss of mobility that comes with it. I also find that most decent missiles will strip through between 2-5 layers of adv armor. Also, until Schine implements "armor regeneration" like on EVE or fixes the Astro-tech (get to work, you guys! ), that armor is gone permanently once it's been hit.

Do you find armor tanking more effective than shield tanking?

shields are definitely better but armor can make a ship a last quite long too.armor never really completely blocks fire but slows down the damage considerably. If you scroll down to post 7 you can see an example https://starmadedock.net/threads/aeon-raiders.30984/
Also here from the old systems when armor was even weaker:

The thing is with the recent update armor is EVEN stronger but not sure to what degree (since I'm mostly shield tanking now)

 

[OfficialCoding]

I'm glad I'm not the only one who likes advanced armour. I use it because it offers the highest HP/mass ratio. It does slow my ship down a bit but i think it's worth it.

 

[NeonSturm]

I think peoples only start using armor when 1/6 total (one side of your ship) or even 1/12 cuz attack angle is specified is 4x strength.
Only then, a ship similarily looking but 140% size will be same str if shield tanking as a 100% sized ship with armor tank.

Scaling cubic, we don't care -except for competitions, but there attrition count too- about 1:1 balance. Life isn't like that. We will always use shields, except we find a reason not to.

Drones can use armor. But on my capital I want shields.
Ablative armor plates like for covering an assault-vector may use something to detach and block damage so that shields only need to block damage elsewhere.

 

[Spartan-228]

When using armor remember to use internal bulkheads. If all you do is build an armored shell around your subsystem the first missile to breach your armor will rip a big holes in you. Internal armor also helps decrease the amount of area damage done by cannons and beams, although not as much as it does against missiles.

As for what armor can stop and how much you should use. Well that is relative, it all depends on the avrage weapons you will be facing. For me 2 to 4 blocks thick is enough to stop or adiqitly dampen (for a time) the effects of most turret mounted weapons. Spinal mounts is another story there is no stopping those.

But conserining B+B I find that I don't mined the shields dropping, but I do find some of the suggestions so far to be equally effective.

 

[Nebulon-B_Frigate_FTW]

I'm all for having a Beam / Beam super weapon with a caveat, however I think the shields ...

I'd like to suggest that instead of a complete shield drop, the B/B weapon would prevent other systems drawing power from the ship. So thrust stops working, all other weapons stop firing and shields stop charging but do not drop completely while the B/B charges and fires. That way you can still aim but you are otherwise helpless while the weapon powers up. You have to way up trying to win a battle with conventional weapons or take a risk on one big shot. That to me would be a much more useful mechanic that'd I'd actually consider using. As it is now B/B is just not an option... Thoughts?

I wouldn't go as far. I'd just have shield recharge stop.