Things You Never Use

[Gasboy]

Oh, something I never use.

Stealth.

If I can't make a klingon Bird of Prey or a romulan Warbird style cloaked ship, I'm not interested. I don't want some piddly little "reactor lines, thrusters, and cloaker" ship because the power requirements are so insane that you can't afford to even put basic hull on the ship and still get your perma-cloak to work.

Not to mention still showing up on radar.

I do hope they'll fix it up properly by making it a cloaking computer AND modules, so at least the power consumption will become reasonable.

You can achieve decent stealth by using black blocks, the jammer, and keeping the local star behind you. That way you present a very dark profile and you're not on their hud as a flashing red triangle. If they don't see your weapon fire... you can get in some good fire before they can retaliate.

 

[Edymnion]

Not to mention still showing up on radar.

I do hope they'll fix it up properly by making it a cloaking computer AND modules, so at least the power consumption will become reasonable.

You can achieve decent stealth by using black blocks, the jammer, and keeping the local star behind you. That way you present a very dark profile and you're not on their hud as a flashing red triangle. If they don't see your weapon fire... you can get in some good fire before they can retaliate.

Oh yes, this I've done. When I want a "stealth ship" its all black standard hull and a jammer.

Sure, the AI can still spot me, but unless I'm in a heavy nebula system, no human player can keep tabs on me in a fast black hulled fighter.

 

[Rixxan]

Oh yes, this I've done. When I want a "stealth ship" its all black standard hull and a jammer.

Sure, the AI can still spot me, but unless I'm in a heavy nebula system, no human player can keep tabs on me in a fast black hulled fighter.

Two things:
1) This is why I have AI turrets that warn me of bastards like you
2)

 

[Edymnion]

Yeah, its just sad though when hull camouflage is an all around superior option to an actual dedicated cloaking device.

 

[Ithirahad]

You learn to make do with whatcha got at hand after your ship is turned to Swiss cheese, and you need to patch the hull up somehow.

If you're flying what I think you're flying, the solution is to take apart what's left and build something better...

 

[Lecic]

Power/Shield Drain: I don't use either of these for any reason. Power transfer I use in docked reactors, but the drain beams are completely worthless to me when I can stick EMP or ION onto actual weapons for much greater effect.

Shield drain is extremely useful, seeing as how damage you do to the enemy goes back into your own tanks.

Power drain is kind of useful in that it makes up for the power it drains in firing, but it's so bad compared to just using EMP in terms of damage.

Pulse: Not for primary, almost never for secondary. The long reload time and insane up front power cost makes it a poor choice for how I like to play. Especially since the way shield recharge works means you're better off having faster shots that prevent recharge from kicking in rather than one uber-decimating shot that, frankly, is likely to have most of it's power wasted. I will occasionally stick a X/pulse on a turret, but not often.

Beam/Pulse/Ion is fantastic, though. Your loss.

Heavy Armor: Now, its a lie to say that I NEVER use it, but I only use it for spot reinforcements. And frankly, I use it so little that it might as well be a decorative block to me at this point, really. But then, I prefer to shield tank, not armor tank. If shields are down, I'm screwed anyway, anything with guns big enough to drop my shields on a size to size basis is going to tear through any kind of armor without noticing its there in the first place, so the increased mass just isn't worth it to me.

Heavy armor has lower AHP per block, so you need to "reinforce" the AHP pool with lots of basic armor. The absurd levels of EHP you can pull out of the armor when running both passives makes it well worth the weight, especially with larger ships and their ever decreasing efficiency with shield capacitors.

Side note, I like to put 1 block beam/cannon emitters in front of my cannon turrets. Its very difficult to actually see cannon fire, and since the AI can fire both weapons at the same time it acts like tracer rounds so I can see exactly where my turrets are aiming.

This will, unfortunately, cause increased inaccuracy at larger ranges, because the turret will try to account for two different projectile velocities when it aims (hitscan and 12.5x/25x server max in this case.) I would only recommend doing this if your cannon is cannon/beam, since it's the fastest projectile in the game.

 

[Master_Artificer]

I would say the logic-ed defensive push effects but that recently changed, so I would have to say the defensive Pull, Stop, Explosive, and EMP effects for sure.

Paying power to prevent the loss of power is silly, add more excess power.
On the other hand, I discovered a while ago how silly it is to have a high DPS weapon with emp paired with a large alpha array of beam+pulse+emp. Most people utilize all the power on their ship it seems, they dont let any go to waste, which means if they don't have over three million excess power regen they will soon be dead in the water.
Can't charge a logic jump drive with no power, nor recharge shields with no power. (let alone move :D)

 

[NeonSturm]

PvP

EDIT:
I suck at it, it causes me physical pain, and I don't see how I would feel any joy or satisfaction when I obliterate other people's hard work.

I agree partially with @Valak.
I don't like to obliterate hard work either, but it's interesting to test flaws in a design.
But mass production is hardly hard-work.

I think a small fight should occur once in 2-5 hours game-play, but only if you are searching for it by "A: searching for it" or "B: have really insufficient weapons installed and be a valuable but defenceless target".

Larger fights should occur when it comes to faction politics. Who got the best ship? You got it? NO, I got it!

 

[DrTarDIS]

Yeah, its just sad though when hull camouflage is an all around superior option to an actual dedicated cloaking device.

...dunno about you but I turn the advanced backgrounds on...black ships stand out like beacons in nebula systems.

 

[AtraUnam]

^ I play with backgrounds completely turned off (looks better IMO) and black hull still stands out like crazy.

 

[Sgtwisky]

THAT my friends is why you should use white hull for stealth. No one expects you to do anything sneaky when you look like you are supposed to be there....

But yes, I wish cloak/jam were revamped. Maybe give cloak a binary system? Like with shields you have your capacity, and your recharge? SO you COULD cloak a huge ship... but only for short periods of time, while small ships could recharge fast enough to cloak forever. Of course you would still need the "If weapons are fired remove cloak" and "If scanned remove cloak and apply cooldown".

 

[Edymnion]

For cloaking, the standard "drop cloak when you fire" and "shields go down when you cloak and have to recharge when you drop the cloak" alone would be pretty good checks and balances without setting it up where a cloaker ship is incapable of carrying anything else.

 

[Sgtwisky]

Is the current shields dropping when cloaked implemented? I haven't actually tried to build a cloaking ship recently so I don't know the current state very well.

 

[Lecic]

Is the current shields dropping when cloaked implemented? I haven't actually tried to build a cloaking ship recently so I don't know the current state very well.

No.

 

[Blakpik]

Light rods are excellent for engine lighting effects.
[DOUBLEPOST=1455190073,1455189898][/DOUBLEPOST]

Sure, they're not really useful in combat, but they are very handy for repairing after combat. You don't stick them on your main combat ship. Instead you make a small tender or maybe a turret on a station.

So you can have a small ship heal your big one, seems convenient... IF IT WEREN'T ONE BLOCK AT A TIME.

 

[NeonSturm]

I remember the day when I had a completely-black ship using unused blocks by spawning them locally with admin commands and uploading the ship-blueprint.

I couldn't spot the entrance at all, even when the ship was visible in front of a cookie-planet.

Sunworld-Admins asked me to stop that, but were not too upset as I haven't exploited it too much and actually asked admins if they know that nice thing.

 

[Nickizzy]

If astrotech beams placed blocks from a storage according to the ship's design(the shipyard design, put into the shipcore by left-clicking the ship core with it(as like music disks in minecraft you fanboys). Blocks spawn with 1 hp and slowly get healed like regular astrotech. Astrotech beams have a punch through effect to get to missing interior blocks. They will not destroy incorrectly placed blocks(or if the ship has the wrong design). AI will place all missing blocks on a ship before staring to heal the blocks, starting with the closest damaged/missing blocks and moving out(ie; It places all missing blocks on an entity(ships, stations, and planets) before healing the up like the current function). Astrotechs could also have an option to only place blocks, or only heal them. Placing blocks takes the same amount of time it would take to heal the block(ahp+hp), the heal equasions stay the same.

I wish shield and power drain/give were effects instead of weapon-style systems. Then they would be useful, you could have dedicated vamping weapons that only do 50% damage, but give you 25% of the damage(200 damage shot does 200 shield damage, same system with shield drain does 100 damage 100% shield drain shot: 50 shield is give to your ship.

 

[Lukwan]

Why all the hate-on for the mighty transfer beams?!

-So, do you all enjoy going without shields for 10 seconds? I am never more than half a second without shielding thanks to my trusty
shield-transfer beam (mounted on docked entity)
-Ever had an enemy drain all your power so you cant even move...or jump or charge guns? (Power-transfer beam)
-Having trouble with your finishing move? Get up on your enemy and turn on a logic-driven power-drain on him. No, you wont steal ALL his power...that's not the point. You are going to finish him, using his own power to charge the weapon systems that have such high dam O/P that YOU cant power them by yourself. Saves you having to haul all those reactors around like a chump. It is a tipping-the-balance tactic not Force-Majeur.

I never use:
-Warheads (nerfed into snow-balls)
-Power-supply (hand-gun) Only needed for stranded players on Day-1. Just make the ability innate and get rid of the useless pistol.
-Helmet. (I guess I can breathe vacuum.)
-Shipyard. Great for dis-assembly of ship,but...
-*Glitches when I use symmetry-mode.
-*Messes with turrets when spawned.
-*Fails to keep text on displays.
-*Fails to keep transporter-names when spawned.
-*Fails to replace missing blocks of a design without messing up the above.

*Edit July 14th, 2016: Some improvements have been made to Shipyards but they are not bug-free yet.

Eat the old ship and re-spawn from BP is still the most streamlined way to repair safely.

 

[Nickizzy]

-Warheads (nerfed into snow-balls)

-Shipyard. Great for dis-assembly of ship,but...

Eat the old ship and re-spawn from BP is still the most streamlined way to repair safely.

1. Have you ever heard of configs?

2. Shipyards are great for mass production and they don't need shops or total rebuilding to repair.

 

[Ithirahad]

2. Shipyards are great for mass production and they don't need shops or total rebuilding to repair.

They're great if you like all your turrets and docked entities to disappear when you log back in...