Awesome trick for the Stealth Ship B!

[UglyMug]

Think ships with Zoltan shields are your bane? Just discovered that you can pierce them and hit the weapons room on the first shot with the Glaive(at least against the Energy Bomber layout). Start your beam in the bottom right hand corner of the Empty top room. Drag the targeting line through the helm, doors, shield, and then ending in weapons. 5 rooms. You'll hit the weapons room for 3 damage minus his normal shield. Enough to knock it out early on. I'm not sure how exactly beams and Zoltan shields interact (they seem to interact weirdly with each other) but this trick seems to work. Screenshot:

[Whale Cancer]

I think every room hit counts as a hit against the Zoltan shield. It just doesn't look like that because the beam isn't drawn past the shield.

[UglyMug]

Actually I was thinking about how I've seen beams behave before. I notice that they do two damage pulses against Zoltans, each for their listed damage. You can see the green floating "3" in my screen shot. Then it looks like they apply their damage at the very end of the beam. If Zoltan is still up it does nothing, if it isn't it tries to get through the normal shields. Maybe the room count isn't important? And maybe the length of the beam is relevant. Hmmm.... hmmmm....

[kiowa]

Actually I was thinking about how I've seen beams behave before. I notice that they do two damage pulses against Zoltans, each for their listed damage. You can see the green floating "3" in my screen shot. Then it looks like they apply their damage at the very end of the beam. If Zoltan is still up it does nothing, if it isn't it tries to get through the normal shields. Maybe the room count isn't important? And maybe the length of the beam is relevant. Hmmm.... hmmmm....

If the "damage at very end of beam" theory is correct, then it is quite likely that the "very end" is not a discrete point but a very small length. In this case, if you place your shot that the very end segment of your beam crosses 2 or even 3 rooms, you can even do damage to multiple rooms. I'll try to find a zoltan and try this out, hope they don't just stop popping out when I am actually looking for one!

[UglyMug]

The end of beam theory didn't work against the other Zoltan ship, when I only hit three rooms. So now I'm completely stumped. The beam always does the same damage to the Zoltan shield no matter how many rooms I hit: listed damage x 2. But when I use the targeting method in the original post I can pretty consistently pierce the shield and hit the weapons room of the Energy bombers.

Bug? Feature? What gives?

EDIT:

Oh! I bet I know! You get a damage pulse per room, but the game caps it at two. And it takes a brief moment for the Zoltan Shield to fade. So if you hit two rooms at the very beginning of the sweep and then enter one at the very end - I bet you'll get the pierce!

[UglyMug]

Yeah, was testing this some more. You can indeed get that weapon room hit by using the method described above. Hit 2 rooms at the very start of the sweep, then enter one at the very end. It works against other layouts, but is most reliable against the Energy Bomber.

[Galdred]

Yup, it looks like you need to hit 3 rooms before AND to hit the weapon just with a very small part of the end beam. It works against other layout indeed. It has not failed once in my last playthrough with the stealth B. That said, you'll only hit the weapon room for 2, because of the regular shield, which might not be enough to shut down all their weapons.

[thereaverofdarkness]

I've used beams against the zoltan shield plenty of times and they always hit it exactly twice, even though I'm always aiming my beams to hit 4 or 5 rooms.