(October 11th, 2014, 13:01)Sullla Wrote: The ion weapons are still something that I'm trying to get a good feel for. There's a fine line between an ion weapon that knocks off one shield bubble and does nothing else, and the cascading ion sequence that eliminates all shields and keeps them permanently depowered. I need to play around more with the ion weapons to get a better handle on how they function with more than one of them in operation at a time. They feel like the weapons with the highest skillcap to use effectively, since they never directly deal damage.
So I finally actually tried a real run relying primarily on ion weapons last night. With Engi A, an Ion Blast I came early on to add to the starting Ion Blast II. Later I got a second IB2 to replace the IB1.
Problem 1, you can't afford to use a combat drone in every fight. Even a Drone Recovery Arm wasn't enough since fights would last so long that the combat and defense drones would keep getting hit and destroyed.
Then I got a Chain Laser for damage. So what I'd have to do is ion the shields and weapons for a while, then switch over to the laser for damage. The Chain Laser is actually a pretty good companion, the fast charge able to take advantage of the shield stunlock.
Problem 2, cloaking. Goddamn that cloaking. Any cloaking above level one would interrupt the ion stunlock, even with two IB2s both going. The chain laser would get absolutely nowhere.
Problem 3, enemy systems in general. I had so many fights that went like this. Need to ion the piloting to kill the evade to get to the cloaking. Need to ion the cloaking to keep the stunlock going to get to the piloting. Catch-22. Not to mention getting through the shields in the first place too, or the weapons to keep the damage off me, or even the hacking that's on my oxygen to set a time limit for the fight. There's just too many targets and not even dual Ion Blast IIs can keep up with them all.
Ion weapons are a trap. They feel all complicated and skill-testing so you feel clever in making them work. But there is no upside ceiling there, no reward for playing the skill properly. Anything ions can do, burst lasers can do just as well and more reliably and much faster.
That shield stunlock looks so tempting... but it's something you just don't need to do. An equal amount of regular lasers will get through the shields too in bursty fashion rather than continuous... and that's all you need because the lasers will also deal damage. Stunlock to open the way for a combat drone looks like such a great idea... if you can afford the drone part and the enemy doesn't have an anti-drone and the enemy doesn't have a missile that hits your drone system and the combat drone doesn't bump itself into some laser or asteroid. There's just too many contingencies that fail too often. It's the Danger of Cool Things. Stick with simple stuff that just works.
At the last store in sector 7, I just gave up and sold out the ions for a Flak II, Breach Bomb, and hacking to drop the shields. This smacked through the flagship phase one a million times better than anything ionic would have.
(I lost on flagship phase 2, but for entirely different reasons: my crew was all Engi who couldn't get rid of a boarding drone in the shield room, which eventually destroyed the shields for the drone surge to kill me. But this ultimately points back to the failed ion approach - thanks to buying too many repairs and drone parts, I could never afford Cloaking which is the silver bullet against the drone surge.)
(November 5th, 2014, 14:28)Gustaran Wrote: I feel the same way, but when you check AE ship tier lists on reddit the Kestrel A basically never makes it into the top 10.That's a popularity contest, which will reward being splashy, which the Kestrel A and its BL2 aren't. Everybody likes the boarding ships because boarding feels more cruel and satisfying, kind of ignoring the cases where boarding doesn't work. For gunships, the Federation artillery, the Stealth ships, and even the Kestrel B (four guns) are more splashy than Kestrel A.