EMP, Alpha Damage vs. DPS, and Negative Power

[Winterhome]

So, Lancake and I were discussing this in the chat room after the subject of Push Pulse and Skoomdrones came up. I really miss the ability to lock down ships, but skoomdrones were OP as shit, aye?

EMP kinda should fill that vacuum.

The damage numbers are just about perfect as they are right now, and don't need to be changed in the least. What DOES need to change is how it effects a ship when it hits 0 power. DPS based EMP guns are still superior, because alpha EMP weapons pretty much don't do anything to a ship worthwhile. EMP is only worth it if you can actually prevent an enemy from firing their weapons, as it stands, and alpha suffers greatly from the simple fact that almost every ship can regenerate power fast enough to fire anyway. EMP based DPS weapons drain the regen pool, effectively, so they work as intended and allow the enemy to run themselves out of power on their own.

My idea: EMP damage can overflow past 0, into the negatives, but does no extra damage to a ship's power supply if it's already at 0 or lower. This separates out Alpha based "Crippler" EMP weapons from steady DPS debuff cannons. Perhaps the limit for negative power should be the total power capacity of the ship?

 

[Lecic]

This would make EMP Alpha useful. Yes please.

 

[XyNox]

I think immediately disabling a ship with EMP, rendering all its weapons and thrusters useless in an instant should not be in the game at all. If a capital ship fired an EMP weapon at a fighter, fine, the effects should be severe but being able to deal a practically infinite amount of EMP damage would be stronger of a weapon than anything that is designed to actually destroy your enemy.

IMO it would be more suitable to make EMP's primary effect a reduction of power recharge over a given time within the target and only a fraction of the damage actually applying to lower the current charge. This way ships without any mentionable power reserve will run dry quickly whereas huge ships with huge reserves could sustain under EMP longer, which actually makes sense.

 

[alterintel]

How about this: EMP down to 0 power forces a reboot?

 

[Lecic]

I think immediately disabling a ship with EMP, rendering all its weapons and thrusters useless in an instant should not be in the game at all. If a capital ship fired an EMP weapon at a fighter, fine, the effects should be severe but being able to deal a practically infinite amount of EMP damage would be stronger of a weapon than anything that is designed to actually destroy your enemy.

I believe in chat we discussed the idea of rebooting fixing any negative power you had to prevent a fighter from getting locked up for 10 years by a massive EMP weapon.

Additionally, how about buffing passive EMP? In addition to reducing EMP damage, it could reduce the amount of negative power you can get.

 

[XyNox]

I do not really see a reason why an EMP weapon should be so powerful, even with a reboot required at 0 power. Shields and hull are there for a reason. Now if everyone could just aim a massive EMP deathcube alphaweapon at me and force me into a 30 sec or more reboot with every shot, whats the point ? I think EMP should be a utility tool first and foremost. IE if you are facing a smaller ship that stands no chance to fight against you, EMP gives you the ability to hold it down and board it instead of having to gun it to pieces.

 

[Lecic]

I do not really see a reason why an EMP weapon should be so powerful, even with a reboot required at 0 power.

A reboot wouldn't be required.

 

[XyNox]

A reboot wouldn't be required.

So what would happen if an EMP hit caused to end up with -10000% power drifting in space ?

 

[Winterhome]

I think immediately disabling a ship with EMP, rendering all its weapons and thrusters useless in an instant should not be in the game at all.

Do you feel the same way about one hit killing a ship's shields and armor HP, and blasting a 50 meter hole in its hull with minimal effort, too?
[DOUBLEPOST=1442110058,1442110024][/DOUBLEPOST]

So what would happen if an EMP hit caused to end up with -10000% power drifting in space ?

Perhaps the limit for negative power should be the total power capacity of the ship?

read pls

 

[XyNox]

This is exactly what makes for the fundamental difference here. Onehit killing gets more difficult the bigger the targets get, which is how it is supposed to be. The simple fact that actually destroying blocks off of an enemy ship serves as a more difficult task because of the sheer area your weapon would have to affect at the same time makes it balanced. When building weaponsystems, you have to decide between alpha, DPS, anti-shield, anti-block, focused and penetrating or widespread and arial damage.

EMP does not have to care about a lot of these things. EMP does not have to care where you hit or what you hit on the enemy structure since a hit, no matter where or how, would bypass shields, hull/standard/advanced armour equally and go directly to the power. If EMP weapons would be so strong that they could serve as reliable alpha weapons, which means being able to disabe a ship in one hit, that would be silly.

 

[Lecic]

EMP does not have to care about a lot of these things. EMP does not have to care where you hit or what you on the enemy structure since a hit, no matter where or how, would bypass shields, hull/standard/advanced armour equally and go directly to the power. If EMP weapons would be so strong that they could serve as reliable alpha weapons, which means being able to disabe a ship in one hit, that would be silly.

EMP has a counter, you know. EMP defensive? Maybe give people a reason to finally use that if you can be at risk of being disabled for a bit in one shot.

And FYI, it'll take a REALLY BIG GUN to lock up a capital ship for a long time. You need to go past all the capacity, and have enough left over to put them in the negatives AND do enough that it won't just quickly regen. And it'll get harder and harder to 1 hit lock up a ship, because power tanks get larger and larger storage the more you have.

 

[spunkiethefirst]

I suggest using the code for the shield failure with some modifications.

How I imagine this playing out:

1. ship gets hit by shot that would drop it past 0 power (not lower than whatever percentage/flat value it takes to regain systems in step 4)
2. goes into power failure mode
3. power is placed in a protected state until it hits whatever percentage or flat value
4. power comes back online and is vulnerable to emp hits again (maybe lag the vulnerability by a second just in case being hit by continuous stream weapons)

This should prevent big ships from holding little ships prisoner, either kill them or let them go.

 

[Dire Venom]

If a ship can keep you dead in the water, that ship could also blow you into dust in an instant.
It takes a lot more work to keep a ship drained than to blow it up, so seems blanced

 

[Parameter]

I've got a test-ship with an EMP beam-cannon . It does a very good job of shutting down Isanths completely, even Cannon-cannon, as long as my aim is good. I have a 1000-mass gunship with cannons, and it is inconvenienced by my EMP beam, but not enough that it can't rip my test bed apart :p

The issue is I can't simultaneously use the EMP beam and another weapon without logic, which then makes it dumb fire and thus harder to keep on target. What this really means is that an effective EMP ship is really only an EMP beam and turrets.

Constant DPS EMP weapons are fine and fun to use. You can shutdown or significantly degrade smaller ships with the trade-off that your weapons aren't as powerful and you have to use turrets or logic-fired weapons to attack.

It would be nice if alpha EMP weapons would keep a target out of the fight for more than the half second it takes for their power generation to kick back in. Right now, all alpha EMP weapons can do is limit usage of an enemy's alpha weapons with long cycle times. It does almost nothing to enemies with low-power draw DPS weapons, or with high power recharge.

Maybe EMP weapons should debuff power regen instead of existing power? The enemy could still get some good licks in with its remaining power, but it would have to wait longer to refill its reserves afterwards. If this was implemented, perhaps each EMP weapon hit would apply a stacking power regen debuff with duration equal to the weapon's cooldown, and regen reduction equal to 10% of it's current power supply damage .

 

[Winterhome]

I think it would be nice to have some form of "auxillary power" for when main power goes out. If I get EMP'd, or power drained, etc., it would be nice if I had a "battery backup" for things like doors, red or yellow lights, etc.

Maybe by default if you hit zero power the core reboots and you lose all lights, thrust, weapons, etc.

Since that sucks really bad, have an AuxPower computer you can c-v power capacitators or power modules to. If ship power hits zero, it shifts to AuxPower until 10% main power capacity is regained. AuxPower can't be drained and doesn't cut-off the ship if its power hits zero, but it has a 20%-50% power regen penalty. That way, people build some amount of "safe" power, but it's expensive enough people don't make all their power auxillary.

Cross-posting from the "Lights and Logic vs. Power" thing.

Maybe an "auxiliary power" type of system could also be useful as a backup against EMP weapons, but it would have the penalty of being on a totally different system from the rest of the ship's systems as well as having lower power efficiency.

Of course, I still think that EMP Passive effect is the way to go for "real" protection, but at least an auxiliary system gives your overheating titan enough power to limp to a shop instead of waiting an hour to reboot, and allows for extremely small ships to potentially dodge fire after the main power system has been kicked off.

 

[aceface]

oooh me likey
a 1 mil alpha emp strike on a fighter would completely disable it.