Useless Blocks

[Proxima_Centauri]

So what is going to be done about the useless weapon systems that are currently in the game?

(i.e)
-Push Pulse
-Shield Supply
-Shield Drain
-Power Drain
-Push/Pull as passive effects
-EMP as weapon effect

Are these inevitably going to be removed?
What will/should these be replaced with?

 

[Megacrafter127]

They aren't useless. They just aren't used THAT often because they only fill niches.
Powerdrain and EMP can be used to break the stealth of a stealthfighter e.g.

I think they're going to be turned a little more useful.

 

[Comr4de]

If you think these are useless you obviously have no idea what you're doing.

The only point I agree on is that push/pull are way too weak to be useful in a defensive fashion.

 

[MrFURB]

So what is going to be done about the useless weapon systems that are currently in the game?

(i.e)
-Push Pulse
-Shield Supply
-Shield Drain
-Power Drain
-Push/Pull as passive effects
-EMP as weapon effect

Are these inevitably going to be removed?
What will/should these be replaced with?

The push pulse can be used as an EMP effect against an enemy's navigation controls. While negligible against turrets, it is highly effective at keeping an opponent's primary weapons from facing you. Keptick recently created the Skoomdrone, which seeks hostile targets and circles them all while emanating a constant stream of pulses disabling the opponent's turning and thrusters until the drone gets tired and wanders off to torment some other poor hooman. Getting something akin to a Skoomdrone in position near an enemy during a firefight can pretty much ensure victory by giving you a stationary target unable to react to your positioning.

Shield supply is one of those things that is broken in concept, but hasn't had the thorough testing needed to specify if and what type of balancing is needed. It's easy to see why it could be OP, with interior shield generators giving the mothership a constant supply of out-of-combat shield regen to outlast opponents. If someone doesn't make a capital ship brawler using these and gets them nerfed, then I will.

Shield drain is something that I've dabbled in just a few days ago. I have a vessel in the works that uses shield drain beams as one of it's primary offensive tools. Regular weapons have a base 5 DPS, using 10 energy per point of damage. The shield drain has 10 DPS at 1 energy per damage... That's not counting that every point of damage you deal with this weapon is added to your shields. It is the highest base DPS weapon with the lowest base energy cost in the game. It's weakness? Range, something that utility systems or a beam secondary can fix easily enough.

The power drain is quite like the shield drain in essence, but lacks some of it's uses while gaining others. Using a power drain as an effective combat tool requires a massive beam; enough to completely drain your opponent's power pool faster then they can drain your shielding. I've found them to be excellent in larger ships for disabling vessels so that you can 'play with your food', whether that is holding the pilot hostage or just disabling so that you can get a perfectly lined shot in to maximize salvaging potential. They're pretty dang hard to use as combat weapons, all in all, but that's not their greatest strength. Their greatest strength is their ability to take power from reactors docked in or on your own vessel, all but circumventing the game's regular 1,000,000 bonus regen soft cap. This can give your capital ships plenty of extra energy to put into use.

I hope this helps inform folks of all the evil things one can do with the more utility-based systems in the game. The true power of a mighty warship lies not in it's weapons alone, but in every system engineered to fuel, support, and augment it's offense and defense.

 

[ToyotaSupra]

Useless? Dude those are the best weapon systems in the game. You can do so much with them.

 

[FunnyBunny14]

Docked internal shield supplies act like they're under fire when the mothership is under fire @MrFURB . Or at least that's what I've been told. It is OP for stations though, as they can have undocked shield supply ships.

 

[Ithirahad]

Furb, please don't get those nerfed. In smaller (cruiser-sized) ships, shield batteries are fun but usually not OP since they can get bombed out by missiles.

 

[ltmauve]

Power drain is pretty much useless, since you can't hit the power blocks on a good ship until it's already gotten its shields punched through. Making logic batteries with power supply is pretty easy.
I actually set up shield supply beams in my cruiser to charge the shields of torpedoes that don't have any shield-rechargers on them, so there's another use for them.

 

[Criss]

Maybe if people stopped trying to use their ships to instantaneously rip other ships apart and started designing ships with fleet combat and roles in mind then people wouldn't think of these clearly important weapons as useless.

My suggestion if you want these weapons to have purpose? Build your ships with an interior. A nice one. Then fill it with systems specifically designed for a role. Suddenly what would be normally a strong ship might require assistance when facing off against enemies. Design a whole line of ships this way and suddenly all those ships with their specific weapons might get more of a purpose on the battlefield.

Unfortunately that means a longer wait to see the result and most players want instant gratification. I always hear about how people make heavy duty freighters or something, and yet they attach massive turrets that render it completely self sufficient.

 

[Proxima_Centauri]

Docked internal shield supplies act like they're under fire when the mothership is under fire @MrFURB . Or at least that's what I've been told. It is OP for stations though, as they can have undocked shield supply ships.

Furb, please don't get those nerfed. In smaller (cruiser-sized) ships, shield batteries are fun but usually not OP since they can get bombed out by missiles.

Shield supply beams have already been nerfed (they only give the mothership the "under fire" recharge rate. Test it yourself if you don't believe me.

And perhaps I should clarify:
Why are EMP weapons useless? They have to work against a ship's own regen, so in order to drain the power of a ship with 1 mil e/sec, you need to have 150,000 power drain blocks just to counteract the regen, let alone drain the storage.

Why are shield drain beams useless? The same reason as power drain, and Ion weapons already to this job but 100 times better and at 10 times the range or more

Why is push pulse useless? Because it has utterly terrible range and effect compared to, say, a damage beam with a push pulse effect

There's also the fact that none of these beam weapons can be used by AI to consider.

The only one of these beam weapons that has any real use is the power supply beam.

@MrFURB
If the weapons are so great as you say, then why does nobody use them?

My suggestion if you want these weapons to have purpose? Build your ships with an interior. A nice one. Then fill it with systems specifically designed for a role. Suddenly what would be normally a strong ship might require assistance when facing off against enemies. Design a whole line of ships this way and suddenly all those ships with their specific weapons might get more of a purpose on the battlefield.

Unfortunately that means a longer wait to see the result and most players want instant gratification.

So you're saying that these weapons are useless because people are too lazy to build interiors?
Top Kek
They're useless because they're useless.

Also there is space for ships in a fleet with different viable roles, but flying around with shield/powerdrain beams is not one of them

 

[Megacrafter127]

@MrFURB
If the weapons are so great as you say, then why does nobody use them?

They aren't useless. They just aren't used often because they only fill niches.

Or does @MrFURB have another reason?

 

[Keptick]

They actually all have useful attributes.

- Push pulse is actually extremely potent since it has a built in stun/emp effect. Removing it would really be a shame.
-The shield beams can be used to supply turrets with extra shielding with the use of logic. Similar things apply to the power drain/transfer beams.
- Defensive push/pull modules can be used to make cruise control, among other things. They can also be used with a logic clock on drones to make their flight patterns extremely erratic.
- Emp.... er... ok, that one is really useless. But that's just due to it being really under powered.

See? With a little imagination and creativity it's possible to make very good usage of all the features you enumerated. There's no reason for them to be removed. To answer hour question the reason why "nobody" use them (which is false) is because most people don't bother with stuff that "dosnt ad moar dammage", simple as that. Just because you couldn't figure out a use for them doesn't mean that they are useless.

 

[Yetimania]

Why are shield drain beams useless? The same reason as power drain, and Ion weapons already to this job but 100 times better and at 10 times the range or more

It's much harder to get you shield generation as high on ships as it is to get your power gen high. And while shield drain beams don't have the same DPS as an ion cannon, they do have better DPS than non-Ion weaponry, and have the benefit of charging your own shields, circumventing the "under fire" debuff. I'm not saying they're overpowered, or even necessarily the best option, but I think they're far from useless.

EDIT: Also, I just tested and confirmed that using a shield supply beam sets your ship to "under fire". I think this nerfs shield batteries, but doesn't nerf recharging turrets from the mothership.

Does anyone know how many shield points a shield supply beam supplies per second? I can't find documentation anywhere, and the numbers displayed in-game don't seem quite right to me

 

[Criss]

Shield supply beams have already been nerfed (they only give the mothership the "under fire" recharge rate. Test it yourself if you don't believe me.

And perhaps I should clarify:
Why are EMP weapons useless? They have to work against a ship's own regen, so in order to drain the power of a ship with 1 mil e/sec, you need to have 150,000 power drain blocks just to counteract the regen, let alone drain the storage.

Why are shield drain beams useless? The same reason as power drain, and Ion weapons already to this job but 100 times better and at 10 times the range or more

Why is push pulse useless? Because it has utterly terrible range and effect compared to, say, a damage beam with a push pulse effect

There's also the fact that none of these beam weapons can be used by AI to consider.

The only one of these beam weapons that has any real use is the power supply beam.

@MrFURB
If the weapons are so great as you say, then why does nobody use them?


So you're saying that these weapons are useless because people are too lazy to build interiors?
Top Kek
They're useless because they're useless.

Also there is space for ships in a fleet with different viable roles, but flying around with shield/powerdrain beams is not one of them

You stated above that in order to counteract ships with 1 mil regen you would need 150,ooo drain blocks. So yeah... Maybe instead of loading your ship with systems to the point where any actual gameplay mechanics are nullified by the overcompensation of those systems, we all start building with those mechanics in mind. No adjustment to the values in the game will make a difference because the player is not restricted to how many blocks they can place. Its not that theres no room for roles. Its that players find it easier to just make everything OP and covered in firepower.

 

[FunnyBunny14]

Plus the 150 000 power drain blocks obviously isn't based on the drain - cannon effect (but that seriously is OP though: 5x less power and 5-10 x faster hit speed).

 

[MrFURB]

@Proxima_Centauri

A shield drain beam has the same DPS as an ion weapon with twice it's effectiveness if counting for the stolen shield points. It is also ten times as cheap energy-wise to run. The one thing that is lacks is range; A base 200 meters upgradeable to 500 via beam secondary. On a vessel that is running an overdrive effect or has stop/pull weapons available it becomes the game's highest damage offensive system. Well, the highest that isn't relying on a known bug.

Cannon base stats: 15 damage every 3 seconds at 150 power per shot. Double this damage against shielding at 100% ion.
Shield drain base stats: 10 damage every second (more modules increases tick rate) at ten power per tick. All damage dealt is gained as shielding.

At 100%, EMP weapons deal no physical damage, instead dealing ten times their normal damage to the opponent's energy pool. This gives your weapon systems an e-DPS of 50 per block. A 20,000 block weapon system will deal exactly 1 million damage in energy each second. Now, the reason I said

Using a power drain as an effective combat tool requires a massive beam

is due to having to factor in both the power regen and capacity of your opponent. Every block of power storage your opponent has is worth at least 20 seconds of one EMP weapon block firing at it.
It's redeeming qualities begin showing in large, defensively oriented vessels not because your power drain beam completely strips away all of the opponent's power but because the opponent will force himself into defeat by trying to outdo your own defenses using his own energy.

Considering that each point of shielding takes 10 energy to get rid of (5 for ion) we can assume that the average shield capacitor... Well, let's go easy and say 40 instead of 50 points of shielding per... Will swallow up 400 points of the opponent's energy (200 for ion, 640 for hardened shields, 320 for ion against hardened shields). Multiply that by the number of shield blocks on your ship and remove that number from the total amount of energy you need to drain from your opponent.

When you are being drained faster than your regen and have already used all of your energy only to get rid of 80% of your opponent's shielding... Well congratulations, you lost the fight with your ship perfectly intact. The wonderful thing about EMP weapons is that once a ship is disabled, you can keep it disabled and do with it what you will.

Hope this helps!

 

[NeonSturm]

I think the problem is that we build too much % of our ship for power.

1 power generator can produce 47% power per second on docked reactors.
1 weapon block requires about 5 of these docked reactors.

Since only 4/6 (or even 2/6) of your weapons usually fire at the enemy, assume 1 weapon block requires 2.5 reactor blocks (docked ones above 1kk cap)
___

If the game would force us to only 5% of ship blocks being power blocks (like require (at least) X mass per Y reactors or reactors work with proportionally reduced output)...
... it would be much more useful to equip different weapons.

Why? Because right now it is mass-inefficient to use the proper system designed for that job.
OFC, you should NOT be able to equip ALL the systems at full efficiency, BUT more than JUST one one or two.
___

I also think that you should not be able to capture a ship of equal size. You should need more mass in specialized ships to do that (or a stupid/unprepared opponent)

 

[Ithirahad]

EMP is not "useless"... It can be a huge problem vs. some larger ships, depending on how much buffer power they have.