Should I swap my hull beam for ion blast?

[crumbs]

Normal difficulty with AE disabled. I'm on sector 6, about to jump to the exit. More context:

https://imgur.com/a/kYvs6pv

I'm having trouble getting shields down, so I was thinking about getting the little ion blast since I can rarely make use of the hull beam.

What do you think?

Also, am I correct in thinking that if I ran out of missiles, I could only get one shield bubble removed if I shot heavy ion and ion blast at the same time?

[Minmi]

With that setup I'd say ditch either the small bomb or the hull beam and go for the Ion Blast. I pretty much never use Small Bomb myself, but getting enough shield penetration with Halbard Beam (3) and Hull Beam (2) would get tricky.

IB1+HI should be able to stack if they keep hitting though, which means that they can get you through any amount of shields (repeatedly hitting a system with ion keeps adding more disabled bars on top of what it previously had, though the ioned duration added is just the remaining time of the previous ion + the ion damage from the current shot).

I would try to switch out the HI for a IB2 or a Charge Ion though, and ion doesn't work very well on the cloaking stage of the final boss on its own (not sure if that applies to the lowest difficulty) so you'll need to find another solution for that too (hacking would be the easiest solution).

*Edit* Missed that bit about AE being disabled and the difficulty being listed, edited accordingly.

[Ray Robertson]

Heavy ion and ion blast can remove any number of Shields. If they keep hitting. You don't want to shoot them at the same time, though. You want shoot them on autofire basically.

Hacking and charge ion are only available with AE enabled.

[Empiro]

You don't really need 2 beam weapons, so I'd say it's a good idea. With Heavy Ion and Ion 1, you can stack the ions to take down any level of shields. Against the flagship though, you may wish to hold fire and letting it cloak a second time (so you'll be able to shoot both Ions as soon as it decloaks).

For future reference, the Heavy Ion is by far the worst Ion weapon in the game. It has poor Ion DPS, poor power efficiency, and doesn't remove more than one layer of shields.

[crumbs]

Thanks!

Ray says not to shoot the ions at the same time, but Empiro says to do exactly that on the flagship. Is there some disadvantage to shooting at the same time?

With regards to the heavy ion... yeah, I have always been following Holoshideim's weapon tier list, but I completely forgot about it when I bought it. :x

[Empiro]

For your initial burst, it may make sense to shoot both at the same time. However, after that, you should keep both on autofire. For the Flagship, you want to shoot both as soon as the Flagship decloaks, because you want to add as much to the Ion timer as you can before it cloaks again.

[crumbs]

Originally posted by Empiro:

For your initial burst, it may make sense to shoot both at the same time. However, after that, you should keep both on autofire. For the Flagship, you want to shoot both as soon as the Flagship decloaks, because you want to add as much to the Ion timer as you can before it cloaks again.

OK, thanks. :)

For what it's worth I got to the third stage of the flagship battle with that setup but died there.

[letir]

Halberd Beam is powerful enough to handle ships alone, but you would need reliable shield stripping for that - better stack ions.

Double beams in general is bad idea, unless you have something crazy as secondaries.

[Danny]

You ALWAYS want to get a good shield breaker if you're running any kind of beams.