Beam Weapons (Fire Beam)

[agvkrioni]

New user here. I bought a fire beam weapon, my first beam weapon, and I realized aiming it isn't like a normal weapon. You don't just choose one spot and fire. So how does it work? You... drag a line? Where does it hit?

[BigD145]

It's a beam. You drag it across sections of the ship. This requires two clicks, an origin and an end.

[agvkrioni]

If I want to use a Fire Beam to knock out specifically an enemy's life support would I (or even could I) drag the beginning and ending points of the beam at opposite sides of that same room? Meaning no other rooms would be touched, could I do that, would the beam still be able to fire?

[Rhym]

The beam will hit all rooms along the line, even if you have just 1 pixel of it inside the room. I seem to recall the beam has to start and end within a room (you can't click to start it if you haven't targetted a room atleast).

[Gorlom]

If I want to use a Fire Beam to knock out specifically an enemy's life support would I (or even could I) drag the beginning and ending points of the beam at opposite sides of that same room? Meaning no other rooms would be touched, could I do that, would the beam still be able to fire?

I'm not sure any beam is that short, not even the minibeam is I think. Doesn't matter anyway, a beam only damages a room once so there would be no benefit in fitting it inside a room. However using corners to maximize covering across several rooms means you do more damage..

[Maya]

If I want to use a Fire Beam to knock out specifically an enemy's life support would I (or even could I) drag the beginning and ending points of the beam at opposite sides of that same room? Meaning no other rooms would be touched, could I do that, would the beam still be able to fire?

I'm not sure any beam is that short, not even the minibeam is I think. Doesn't matter anyway, a beam only damages a room once so there would be no benefit in fitting it inside a room. However using corners to maximize covering across several rooms means you do more damage..

The Fire Beam can ignite every square it hits, so if you want to destroy specific Rooms with fire, then it's the best to hit as many squares in it as possibly (so both squares in a 2x1 oder 3 squares in a 2x2 room). An other Tactic could be to Ignite as many rooms as possible to divide their Crew and making their tries to repair the ship even more harder, when the fire expands fast (like the tactic used for common beams).

[Mr_Pink]

Am I right though in saying that beam weapons only do damage when
all layers of sheilds are gone?

I know that there is one beam weapon that is a exception to this rule. If this is false can someone
tell me how the work with sheilds?

[agigabyte]

Am I right though in saying that beam weapons only do damage when
all layers of sheilds are gone?

I know that there is one beam weapon that is a exception to this rule. If this is false can someone
tell me how the work with sheilds?

Beams pass through shields per damage.

Example: 4 damage beam hits 3 shield ship, one damage per room. If the ship had 4 shields nothing would happen, 2 would do 2 damage.

[Iranon]

System and hull damage are assigned per room, being 1 pixel inside is enough.
Crew damage and chances to start fires (Fire Beam, Mini-Beam) are assigned per tile.

Damage gets reduced by 1 for each layer of shields. It's often a good idea to target shields near the start. A Glaive Beam (3 damage) starting in a 2-bar shield system (1 layer) will inflict 2 damage there, taking down the shield. Then it will cause 3 damage in all further rooms it hits.

Fire and Anti-Bio-Beams are ineffective through regular shields, but they reduce Zoltan Shields by 2 layers (other beams reduce them by twice their damage, beam length doesn't matter)

You need to start targeting within a room, but after that you just control the direction. The beam is of a fixed length and can end in space. Sometimes you want to hold back a little if it means you can take a ship intact. Example: Keep Medbay, Oxygen and Weapons on fire, and enemy crew will harmlessly stay in the currently safe spaces until they suffocate. If there is no safe space, they may repair something that puts them back in the fight.

[zeek]

I'd call the fire beam and advanced user weapon. It requires you to have some other way of lowering enemy's shields, it is a damage over time type of weapon, and it is almost entirely worthless against auto ships. The damage over time aspect of the fire beam means it's not very effective at taking down enemy systems in any predictable manner. It also means battles are drawn out longer than battles using other weapons. So, you probably need stronger defenses to carry you through the long fights. It's also not a good weapon to stop an enemy from fleeing a fight. You're unlikely to take out the whole ship, piloting, or engines quickly using the fire beam.

That being said it is a fun weapon to use. Especially if you have sensors level 2 or 3. That way you can watch the enemy crew scurry around trying to manage the fires.