FTL - Faster Than Light

[Dantski]

The thing is, when you're using lasers to drop shields, those shots are utterly wasted: you drop the shield bubbles to let your other shots through, and the bubbles get back up right afterwards (that's with the usual scenario where you're targetting weapons first).
With Ion, you're not dealing any damage either, but each shot makes the following shot more effective.
That makes it far more efficient than lasers.

Now, obviously, you need to stack enough Ion firepower for the stacking to take place. Ion Blast II (3 power, 1 slot) or 2x Ion Blast I (2 power, 2 slots) are usually the way to go.
High evade is an issue, but it's also an issue for the standard laser shield dropping approach.
Defense Mark II / Cloaking on the other hand are weaknesses specific to the Ion approach.

Having 4x Laser Burst II will obviously make Ion completely useless. What I've found about the Ion gun approach, is that it allows you to cruise through the game for a long time with minimal investment into the weapons system. That means you can spend more early on your defensive systems, which means you're guaranteed a farming opportunity, and you'll find more ships that you can just asphyxiate (so more scrap / rewards) because they can't hurt you.
There's a nice snowballing effect there.

So you're right that that Ion doesn't make for fast kills... but you don't care since you've been buffing your defenses almost exclusively.

But there's big problems with not being able to kill ships quickly. Firstly you'll have difficulty stopping ships from escaping which consequently means you'll make fewer jumps and collect less scrap. Secondly its extremely unlike that your stronger defensive setup is immune to damage, if you don't have a defence drone missiles will be doing more damage over time than with a more offensive build. While you might be able to afford a 3rd or 4th shield bubble earlier or get your evade increased earlier, there's still enough enemy ship layouts that will hurt you just as much if not more because you aren't damaging or disabling their weapons quickly.

The only Ion weapons I use regularly are the Ion Blast II because of the short recharge time which will often take down all shields given enough time and can usually take down a couple of shield layers before my other weapons are charged and the Ion Bomb which deals 4 Ion damage and can knock out a system for a good long while. I don't like the long charge time on the bomb though.

I'll have to give the Ion Intruder drone a try sometime, has anyone spent much time with it? I'm a bit put off by the fact that you can't control where it goes so it'll probably end up going for the enemy doors first.