Damage Pulse as a primary weapon

[godmars]

Has anyone had any experience using Damage pulse outside of slaving it? I remember it got buffed but it seems like you still have to effectively be ramming your target to be in range. Any advice on making an effective weapon system with it, if its even possible?

 

[psteiner]

Has anyone had any experience using Damage pulse outside of slaving it? I remember it got buffed but it seems like you still have to effectively be ramming your target to be in range. Any advice on making an effective weapon system with it, if its even possible?

You know, I think I am going to try this...

 

[AtraUnam]

So far its not really an effective weapon system being easily outclassed by missiles which can do the same job while simultaniously being the longest ranged weapon. Even if you can get into range to use it the lag from any two decent sized ships getting that close will ensure that your target lags away before any damage is even done.

 

[Tomssuli]

Maybe if you had a powerful pull beam and pulled enemy ship to a point blanc range and then used the damage pulse... It goes straight through armors an fcuks up the insides of the enemy ship... What was the range of damage pulse? 40 blocks? No armor is that thick.

Of course you'd have to get rid of the shields first.

 

[AtraUnam]

What was the range of damage pulse? 40 blocks? No armor is that thick.

Of course you'd have to get rid of the shields first.

Deby and the Cherokee would like a word with you.

 

[jayman38]

One guy used damage pulse as a special engine effect.

 

[Tomssuli]

Deby and the Cherokee would like a word with you.

Hehe, if one would make ship so big it could pull the Cherokee around, it probably wouldn't be agile enough to "pulse stab" any ship... But point taken. There seems to be ships out there with such monstrous armor :P

 

[StarWars1981]

Build a ship, then put "Doom Balls" around it, with spikes of armor going out to them, surrounding weapon modules in a 2x2 cross-section "barrel" out to the ball. Inside this ball rests ... well, a lot of armor and the emitter module for the Damage Pulse logic array (for lots of different computers fired simultaneously). DP slave for effect, with explosive effect maybe, or just Punch-Through or whatever. Anything gets close enough, turn'em back the hard way.

 

[KiloZulu]

I've chiefly seen them used for special effects - I always wanted to be able to hook them up to a cannon computer and have them act as a muzzle flash.

The one place where I thought they would be of actual use is as anti-boarding weapons. Put them on a turret that targets personnel, and you can create murder zones in your ship. Just don't be outside of the ship core yourself when they go off...

 

[Sen OTS Tier]

I use them in my Hippogryph for anti-boarding. I have groups under every floor, so nothing should survive. Of course, once crews come out, I may need to rethink it.

 

[Madman198237]

I have one of those, Kilo. I realized that it was not going to be space-efficient to make a cannon or beam AP turret....so I went with a 300+ damage pulse. Good luck boarding my ship unannounced.

 

[alterintel]

I couldn't resist showing off my damage pulse effect computer.
I also can't help thinking how good of a weapon this could be just because it works 40m from output block. Once shields are down this weapon if used correctly could totally get past armor.

 

[Heillos]

As an anti-astronaut weapon, I have found damage pulse somewhat unreliable; as far as I can observe, the damage is only applied when the bubble animation reaches its full radius (my testing may have been flawed or bugged, and I have not yet re-tested). Personally, I favour cannon/cannon/overdrive currently: a block count of 1:1:1 deals 9 damage a shot (90 DPS), easily flattening astronauts in the confined quarters of a ship. Some space is required to install such a turret, but the effectiveness and reliability is significant (and if you are pedantic enough, you can create open space all around it, and place the turret axis inside the base's hull, rendering it practically impervious to cunning boarding maneuvers).

As a primary weapon, it is incredibly limited in usage, especially since the game doesn't make it easy to pilot a ship properly at "melee" range (no relative velocity display or other complex controls, and significant collision check lag). Using pull or stop effects to hold a ship in range, while probably viable, requires significant block counts that could otherwise be spent on any of the actually reliable weapons.

I think it would be quite interesting to consider what could make it viable, personally. Does the radius need buffing? Should the epicentre of the bubble be offset further forward from the output? What if it launches a "projectile" directly forwards, which then explodes after X distance or on impact, whichever condition occurs first?

 

[WeTitans3]

Did Damage Pulse change recently? I don't remember the whole damage bubble thing.

 

[DrTarDIS]

DP as a weapon... the problem is that the DP sphere spawns at a fixed point in space and doesn't inherit momentum (last i checked) so it is kinda useless except at turtle-speed or in situations where you have complete control.

The above mentioned Pull beam into a "maw" is one such viable use, the other being as "landmines" vs anyone chasing you(that thruster plume as an example). Pulse with momentum effects like stop or pull can do weird things to anything chasing you at close enough range.
Also shameless plug. Timestamp 1:07-1:16

 

[Dire Venom]

Anyone tried using them with AI torpedos:?
Stripp their shields and fire a bunch of them at high speed, the AI will guide to the hull

 

[StormWing0]

Anyone tried using them with AI torpedos:?
Stripp their shields and fire a bunch of them at high speed, the AI will guide to the hull

AI doesn't come close enough to effectively use them, although as a docked weapon it should work really well because the AI doesn't factor in the amount of bounding box a docked entity adds.

AI + Pulse Primary on main ship = AI Ship gets really dead and does hardly any damage.
AI + Pulse on a docked spear or something 40m ahead of the ship = gets really evil fast.

 

[AtraUnam]

AI doesn't come close enough to effectively use them, although as a docked weapon it should work really well because the AI doesn't factor in the amount of bounding box a docked entity adds.

AI + Pulse Primary on main ship = AI Ship gets really dead and does hardly any damage.
AI + Pulse on a docked spear or something 40m ahead of the ship = gets really evil fast.

Your forgetting the part where half your torps have killed eachother by the time they get to the target.

 

[StormWing0]

Your forgetting the part where half your torps have killed eachother by the time they get to the target.

Na let him find that out on his own. :P