Discussion: Ion Weapons

[Xantrim]

EDIT: Damn you, tabbed browsing. This should be in the general discussion thread, not in here.

First of all, I am not sure, how exactly they work. My understanding is this: each time you hit a system, one energy bar becomes blocked for each point of ion damage the weapon deals. The time the system is disabled is constant.

Or do they only disable one energy bar and the time depends on the amount of ion damage? (I don't think so)

So far the only good ion weapon I've found is the ion bomb, which seems to disable 2 shield points completely (4 energy bars, that's why I think ion weapons work as mentioned at the start).

I could imagine them being useful with anti-ship drones to shut down their shields, but I am not a big a fan of those, as you can't target anything.

Apart from that I could imagine using them in combination with some burst lasers to take down the shields, then disable a key system like the medbay, so the boarding crew has a chance to fight them. But then again, I could just use any other weapon to destroy the system, instead of just disabling it, which just seems to be more effective.

How do you use them? I have yet to see a situation where I'd prefer an ion weapon over a burst laser (ion bomb is an exception here).

[mrfatpockets]

Ion weapons are pretty useful. What I have seen is that they take away n energy bars for x seconds for n ion damage, and it stacks! I can usually shutdown a ships shields and 1 of their systems with the weapon in early stages.

I got to the last stage of the last boss using 3 ion weapons, and one anti-ship drone then made a stupid mistake and lost. I you have to think differently when using them though. During that game I was just playing around and killed ships by shutting down their oxygen and med-bay.

[Xantrim]

Ion weapons are pretty useful. What I have seen is that they take away n energy bars for x seconds for n ion damage, and it stacks! I can usually shutdown a ships shields and 1 of their systems with the weapon in early stages.

Are you talking about the engi ship starting weapon? That never happened to me. Either I can constantly disable 1 shield point and have the drone attack the hull or I can squeeze a shot through the shield if the drone takes it down temporarily. So if the enemy has 2 shield points, I am screwed. Now compare that to the laser with 3 shots, which only needs 2 energy. Or the small laser firing 2 shots for 1 energy. I can't see how the ion weapon can keep up with that.

Or can that weapon really take down any amount of shield points if you constantly hit? I don't remember the weapon ever taking away more than 1 shield point. Maybe it depends on their shield regeneration rate?

[Maya]

There is no other Weapon wich can compete to the Cooldown of an Ion Weapon. Especially if you got 2 Ion Blast II and cloak at least at lv1, then you can most times get out the enemies weapon system before they even get ready to fire if it's not an Zoltan Ship or a ship with Shield at 4 (except if you got some other Laser Weapons^^).

[NWade]

Are you talking about the engi ship starting weapon? That never happened to me. Either I can constantly disable 1 shield point and have the drone attack the hull or I can squeeze a shot through the shield if the drone takes it down temporarily. So if the enemy has 2 shield points, I am screwed. Now compare that to the laser with 3 shots, which only

The trick is to target the Shields. If you hit the shield bubble, it takes down a level of shield; but not for very long. However, if you "ping away" at the shield and get an ion shot through to the shield room on the enemy vessel, you will disable their shields for a longer period of time. The Ion weapons tend to fire fast enough that (with autofire turned on) you can keep most shields completely powered down - once you've gotten them lowered in the first place.

A combination of an Ion weapon (or two) and a burst-laser or anti-ship drone will usually do the trick. If you want to get fancy you can switch targets between each Ion shot - hit the shields to keep 'em down, then hit the weapons to take them offline, then back to the shields. With the lower-level Ion weapons they fire fast enough that you can "stack" the effects and a few hits in a row will disable multiple enemy weapons as well as their shields. If the enemy has high piloting and/or engines, though, you may miss with a couple of shots and then you have to grind the shields back down. If I have multiple Ion weapons I'll usually start off with them all targeted on the shields, then once the shields are down I re-target one to weapons (and occasionally I'll switch targets to the engines for a shot or two - especially if I get the notice that they're trying to power up their FTL drive).

--Noel
(who's only victory on "Normal" difficulty-mode has been with 2 Ion Blast II, 1 Burst Laser I, an Anti-Ship drone I, and a Defense Drone II)

[Xantrim]

Are you talking about the engi ship starting weapon? That never happened to me. Either I can constantly disable 1 shield point and have the drone attack the hull or I can squeeze a shot through the shield if the drone takes it down temporarily. So if the enemy has 2 shield points, I am screwed. Now compare that to the laser with 3 shots, which only

The trick is to target the Shields. If you hit the shield bubble, it takes down a level of shield; but not for very long. However, if you "ping away" at the shield and get an ion shot through to the shield room on the enemy vessel, you will disable their shields for a longer period of time.

Ah! Thank you very much for the clarification. I didn't know that. Maybe I'll give the engi ship another try then

- Xantrim
(who's 4 victories on normal were all done with mass laser blasters + once a rocket)

EDIT: Ok, so I started again, and I got this before I even completed sector 1:

[Eyjio]

Yeah, Ion fires incredibly fast (side effect: as gunners level up on a "single shot/burst" basis, you'll have a max level gunner 2 sectors after acquiring one), yet that's not the real bonus IMO.

Damage can be repaired. It takes a while, which can be accelerated by more crew. Ion damage, whilst not doing hull damage, cannot be fixed nor accelerated. If you've got enemy systems locked down by Ion, they're helpless until that timer runs down. This is particularly amazing against weapons/shields, which are essential systems for the enemy.

[DarkenDragon]

Heres what I've gathered on the ion weapon, i've only done a bit of testing since i've been playing the engi cruiser lately but it feels pretty sound.

ion weapons have ion damage instead of normal damage. 1 point of ion damage will shut down 1 bar of energy slot (not the energy it has) per 1 point of ion damage, for 1 rotation.

each rotation is about 5 seconds long, this could be wrong but from my counting its about 4-5 seconds.

if you hit a system that is already affected by an ion weapon, it will refresh the time (this im not too sure if it refreshes only if the current duration is less than what you hit it with or not) and will also disable another set of bars depending on your ion damage.

disabled systems can not be worked on and the crew member will stop giving it's bonus while it is deactivated. but the system is still operational as long as theres still enough power to them for it to work.

ion shots that are blocked by the shield will apply their damage to the shield regardless of what you had it target originally.

once the duration finally ends, all energy is replenished.


some examples
you have an ion blast 2 (1 ion damage per shot) and the enemy has rank 4 shields (2 layers).

one shot of your ion blast 2 will remove 1 rank of their shields for 5 seconds, thus only 1 layer is active. if you hit the shield again before the 5 seconds are up, you will remove another rank, so they are at only 2 ranks, they'll still have the 1 layer up and the duration is refeshed back to 5 seconds. only when you hit it for a 3rd time, it will lower the shields completely cuz theres only 1 rank of shields left which isnt enough to power it up. and again will last for 5 seconds. if you stop shooting or miss and those 5 seconds are up, all 3 ranks that were locked is returned and power will be returned to them (if they still have that power in reserved) and will regenerate the 2 layers of shields.

now in the same situation but instead the enemy only gives 2 power to their shield (only 1 layer) but has it upgrade to 4 ranks. your first 2 shots will seem like they have done nothing because you just disabled the last 2 ranks which had no power in them to start with, and only the 3rd shot will show any effect.

hope that helps out.

[liq3]

DarkenDragon has most of it right. The only thing I think he got wrong is that each ion damage ADDs 5 seconds as opposed to refreshing it. Although, I'm now not so sure myself how it exactly works. I know it definitely adds though.

[DarkenDragon]

it definitly doesnt add otherwise the engi cruiser would be way over powered, i've heard people drop that cooldown to like 1-2 seconds per shot (someone was able to get the 4 systems ioned with only 1 of those weapons) and that would mean every shot will add 5? that would mean you'd perminatly disable one system for the entire game,

i've never seen a system disable for more than 5 seconds after being shot at