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TheMac

Jul 16, 2023 @ 7:28pm

Ion Weapons?

I'm watching a playthrough where a streamer decided to try one ion weapon on his larger ships and it got me wondering if anyone has had luck with ion weapons on the higher game difficulty settings.

I've never tried them, preferring to use high damage blasters to overwhelm an enemy ship's defenses and cause them to explode before they can warp off. Seeing an ion weapon fit made me think that they could accomplish a similar task and possibly more reliably. Maybe using a longer-ranged ion weapon to cripple an enemy ship temporarily and then blasters as my ships close in for the kill.

I've never had an enemy use ion weapons against my ships, and the closest I've come to having ships disabled with them is when the nearly invisible space monsters that look like manta rays shoot my ships. Their weapons can be relatively effective early game.

I have had players advise me in the past to put ion weapons on fighters, which I haven't had a chance to do yet. Sounds reasonable as long as the per-shot damage is high enough to overcome ion resistance.

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Showing 1-15 of 41 comments

Nightskies has Distant Worlds 2

Jul 17, 2023 @ 12:52am

They are excellent support weapons with anything but phaser and graviton weapons, though they have less impact with blasters. Even so, they certainly do increase the reliability in finishing off enemy ships. They do multiple more damage to certain components and use a different component hit table than normal weapons. That hit table makes ion hits more likely to disable a ship than other weapon hits. Combined with the ability to temporarily disable components even with shields (possibly doing hundreds of shield damage worth if disabling a charged shield) and armor up, supplementing even blasters with ion weapons is a good choice.

Even better than adding an ion to your ship of choice, is supplementing a fleet with some ships more focused on ion weaponry and some boarding pods with a 1 to 4-8 ratio depending on ship classes of choice, primary weapon, and the race. These specialized ships increase your fleet's capabilities- by focusing them together, you can quickly disable choice hard targets while diverting your fleet's firepower elsewhere. Their low DPS potential tags them as lower-priority targets, which makes them ideal for all-out support designs or for a cheaper, minimalist supplementary role.

In the measure of getting the most bang for the buck in a large, pitched battle where you're squeezing DPS, ions still make themselves valuable by making completely disabled ships more commonplace. Such disabled ships, tactically speaking, are dead ships, sparing your fleet having to do hundreds of damage to finish off a ship that would otherwise keep taking a beating until its hull bursts before it stops moving. In this, the aforementioned specialized ships perform better as well, as they're more likely to make derelicts than piecemeal additional ion to the fleet's standard ship design. This, I think, puts ion on par with anything it supports, if the right ratio is hit. Too little ion won't make derelicts and too much doesn't take advantage of the ion's strengths.

On the other hand, I've used ion weapons as a primary weapon in hard games to cripple entire fleets, allowing me to capture them at my leisure. The Teekan Ion Bomb is particularly potent at this, and even at the early/mid-game tech tier, it overwhelms even the most advanced ion defenses. While they are viable in a single battle (on par with most other weapons by quickly disabling ships), they are terribly slow at finishing enemies since their low DPS is only multiplied against certain components- very notably not including the hull- and much of their damage against those components is nearly entirely mitigated by armor (and doing pretty much no damage to armored hulls). This makes them a poor offensive choice in most situations, strategically speaking, and can only be afforded as a defensive choice if you can predict where the enemy will focus on. They are viable in a battle for a major colony, where they can afford to stay in one place for a long while. In the hard game, capturing entire fleets of ships has a lot of value- especially if concerned about an enemy with restored ancient ships.

With ion as a primary weapon, nothing does well with it except boarding pods. If you're going to destroy ships, you'd be better off just using conventional weapons as a primary weapon.

TheMac

Jul 17, 2023 @ 3:27am

What a fascinating and enlightened view on ion weapons and companion strategies. Thank you.

I sure like the idea of specialized ships in a fleet, and I do think it's quite comical that the AI would see those ships as less of a threat due to lower overall DPS, though the rationale certainly makes sense from a weighted threat perspective. Also very interesting to learn that ion weapons use a different hit table than other weapons in terms of chance to disable components. That also makes sense because it is almost their entire purpose.

Funny that you mention the Ion Bomb, because that did come to my attention is in a recent attempt at a game using the second to the latest beta 1.1.5.3. I received a version of that weapon very early game from salvaging an advanced frigate and I put it on all my mining, research, and resort stations hoping that I'd end up in a war and would get to see the effects. Sadly, there was a rendering bug in that beta that preventing me from continuing, which disappointingly is worse in this beta, though I'm sure it will all be sorted soon enough.

I see choices in the AI setup such as "always capture xxxx types of ships when..." and it makes me wonder if during a pitched battle the AI with appropriately fit ships would attempt to automatically capture disabled ships. I know I can do that by selecting a fleet, then a target ship with crtl-right click and "capture xxxx ship" which causes most ships in a fleet to stop shooting and send boarding pods. I also know on extremely rare situations that the AI in charge of enemy ships will attempt (sometimes successfully so) to capture my ships, i.e., in an encounter with a Hive ship.

Have you ever seen an appropriately fit player fleet follow the AI settings regarding capture parameters and successfully disable / capture enemy ships or is your experience that manual targeting is the only effective method at this stage in the game development?

Nightskies has Distant Worlds 2

Jul 18, 2023 @ 12:46pm

The AI won't utilize boarding pods all that great, *sometimes* to a detriment by stopping attacks when it'd be better to just blow the target up, but they will use them often given the right settings. They do better with ion-equipped ships since they will fire on the target more often and thoroughly disable it, and this is good both in the likelihood of succeeding and in having a higher chance of disabling the ship before committing boarding troops (although boarding troops also disable components before capture). Generally, it's fine to let the AI command these ships, and they'll get plenty of vessels over time. Like most maneuvers, though, they'll almost certainly do better under your command.

So, they don't prioritize targets, and mostly use boarding pods on cooldown, more or less. Like having excessive ion, too many ships with boarding pods in an attack fleet isn't a good thing. Unless all the ships use boarding pods, that's a different story...

I often run small raid fleets designed to capture ships, and under complete AI control, they've captured *a lot* of ships. Many of them are civilian ships. I'll frequently command them to capture stations, and leave them to such autonomous activity while commanding larger, more important fleets.

TheMac

Jul 18, 2023 @ 2:15pm

Originally posted by Nightskies:
The AI won't utilize boarding pods all that great, *sometimes* to a detriment by stopping attacks when it'd be better to just blow the target up, but they will use them often given the right settings. They do better with ion-equipped ships since they will fire on the target more often and thoroughly disable it, and this is good both in the likelihood of succeeding and in having a higher chance of disabling the ship before committing boarding troops (although boarding troops also disable components before capture). Generally, it's fine to let the AI command these ships, and they'll get plenty of vessels over time. Like most maneuvers, though, they'll almost certainly do better under your command.

So, they don't prioritize targets, and mostly use boarding pods on cooldown, more or less. Like having excessive ion, too many ships with boarding pods in an attack fleet isn't a good thing. Unless all the ships use boarding pods, that's a different story...

I often run small raid fleets designed to capture ships, and under complete AI control, they've captured *a lot* of ships. Many of them are civilian ships. I'll frequently command them to capture stations, and leave them to such autonomous activity while commanding larger, more important fleets.

Wow. Excellent advice and use of your ships. Thanks. I'll have to experiment a bit and see if I can find the settings that would allow the AI to capture stations as you mention. Hopefully I'll be in a position to capture some enemy ships soon enough.

Nightskies has Distant Worlds 2

Jul 20, 2023 @ 2:22pm

Can't see the links...

TheMac

Jul 20, 2023 @ 2:29pm

Originally posted by Nightskies:
Can't see the links...

Might have to give it a minute. It's the new Steam just out of beta. They're all visible for me now. :)

You're going to laugh. I'm finally playing the real Teekans, and I'm having quite a bit of fun experimenting with ion weapons as well as the capture mechanics. I had zero expectations, so each capture is exciting (and gives me hope the game is improving).

Sabaithal

Jul 21, 2023 @ 4:00pm

Main thing with ion weapons is they disable enemy systems on hit, whether they are shielded or armored. In effect you can start doing "soft" damage right at the start of the battle. In theory anyway.

There is EMP shielding which mitigates the effects of lower-concentrations of ion weapons, but I don't think the AI ever uses it in its ship designs.

Word of warning: While titan blasters are powerful they can be countered, and when countered there isn't much you can do about it. Main example is upgraded terran hail cannons, which do less theoretical DPS, but because they have a 50% shield bypass they do much more actual damage to ships that rely heavily on shielding (which is almost all AI ships).

Last edited by Sabaithal; Jul 21, 2023 @ 4:01pm

APhoenixSoaring has Distant Worlds 2

Jul 22, 2023 @ 7:44am

Originally posted by TheMac:
Originally posted by Nightskies:
Can't see the links...

Might have to give it a minute. It's the new Steam just out of beta. They're all visible for me now. :)

My following any link you have shared results in:

Originally posted by "Steam":
Error
Sorry!
An error was encountered while processing your request:

There was a problem accessing the item. Please try again.

Brandon

Jul 22, 2023 @ 8:18am

I usually have escorts and frigates filled with Ion Weapons to keep enemy ships from warping away. Once I get some hyper deny weapons I put them on too for destroyers.

I usually put 5 escorts + 5 frigates exclusively with Ions in my fleet. Then for destroyer and above put in bigger guns.

Sabaithal

Jul 22, 2023 @ 8:27am

Yeah, either ion weapons or hyperdeny is a necessity if you're trying to do any real damage to enemy fleets. Either they retreat the moment one of your fleets that has higher numbers shows up, or they constantly jump all over the damn system not stopping long enough for anyone to do any real damage.

Prefer hyperdeny personally, its more efficient at trapping multiple enemy ships at once. Also prior to having hyperdeny I always have all escorts anyway, so enemies don't retreat as often (lower power rating numbers, but that doesn't mean my escorts will lose a fight).

Last edited by Sabaithal; Jul 22, 2023 @ 8:27am

#10

TheMac

Jul 22, 2023 @ 10:53am

Originally posted by APhoenixSoaring:
Originally posted by TheMac:

Might have to give it a minute. It's the new Steam just out of beta. They're all visible for me now. :)
My following any link you have shared results in:
Originally posted by "Steam":
Error
Sorry!
An error was encountered while processing your request:

There was a problem accessing the item. Please try again.

How interesting. Good to know. I won't spend any more time posting screen shots for a while. Sure works well on my end, though. My posts look normal. Guess Steam is still working the bugs out of their new iteration.

I think I'll just take out those posts, then. Better not to have them up if they go nowhere. Thanks for the info.

Last edited by TheMac; Jul 22, 2023 @ 11:03am

#11

TheMac

Jul 22, 2023 @ 11:02am

Originally posted by Brandon:
I usually have escorts and frigates filled with Ion Weapons to keep enemy ships from warping away. Once I get some hyper deny weapons I put them on too for destroyers.

I usually put 5 escorts + 5 frigates exclusively with Ions in my fleet. Then for destroyer and above put in bigger guns.

That's a very fascinating strategy. Do you have issues with differences in range between your smaller and larger ships? Do you fit for similar fuel ranges? If not, how do you handle the refueling asymmetry? Add more tankers?

The smallest ships I usually keep are the improved destroyers, though maybe that's just me being frugal, hoping that the larger ships have a better chance of fleeing vs being destroyed. I do like the idea of the foxhounds chasing down the prey, as in your example.

Last edited by TheMac; Jul 22, 2023 @ 11:07am

#12

APhoenixSoaring has Distant Worlds 2

Jul 22, 2023 @ 3:39pm

Originally posted by TheMac:
Originally posted by APhoenixSoaring:
My following any link you have shared results in:

How interesting. Good to know. I won't spend any more time posting screen shots for a while. Sure works well on my end, though. My posts look normal. Guess Steam is still working the bugs out of their new iteration.

I think I'll just take out those posts, then. Better not to have them up if they go nowhere. Thanks for the info.

I think the issue is that the default privacy setting for a screenshot is private. You want either unlisted or public so that we can see it. If you're going to share with a link, unlisted is perfect. The four settings are private, public, friends-only, unlisted.

Note I was not able to see screenshots on either mobile app or through the website.

#13

TheMac

Jul 22, 2023 @ 4:17pm

Originally posted by APhoenixSoaring:
Originally posted by TheMac:

How interesting. Good to know. I won't spend any more time posting screen shots for a while. Sure works well on my end, though. My posts look normal. Guess Steam is still working the bugs out of their new iteration.

I think I'll just take out those posts, then. Better not to have them up if they go nowhere. Thanks for the info.
I think the issue is that the default privacy setting for a screenshot is private. You want either unlisted or public so that we can see it. If you're going to share with a link, unlisted is perfect. The four settings are private, public, friends-only, unlisted.

Note I was not able to see screenshots on either mobile app or through the website.

Thank you for the info. Sorry for the frustration trying to view it. I didn't change any settings on Steam since the upgrade to the new platform or new version of Steam. Maybe Steam changed it. I'll look again.

#14