What's the general opinion on Chain Ion?

[K. the Land-Surveyor]

Anyone have any good experience with it yet? It seems useful, being able to put out an Ion Bomb's worth of damage out quicker and without using a missile, but I can't bring myself to spend the scrap on it when I run across it in a shop.

[broncbuster]

It takes a while to ramp up. But 2nd shot you're doing 2 ion damage, it's pretty useful.

Got it on my last run, but I was a boarding crew so I stuck with my Ion Stunner to lock a room down and run the manti murder crew to mop them up.

[Tarious]

it's decent against normal ships, but where it truely shines is the flagship since double +4 will take down the shields.

[Kaigen]

I'm not a big fan. It takes more than a minute to ramp up to full power, and until it does, it doesn't do enough damage to chain on its own. And with the long charge-up time, if you miss and the targeted system resets, you're waiting for a good chunk of time for another shot at it. It has its uses, but I'd have to be desperate for an ion weapon to round out a weapon setup before I'd consider paying out scrap for one.

[Dash Headlong]

Chain Ion in Sector 1 + level 2 shields = massive head start.

Unless they have missiles/bombs, a lot of ships in sector 1-2 can't cut through your shields and only have 1 shield unit. Autofire Chain Ion at O2. Win. Your defense team will get skillups from the incoming fire while the Chain builds. At level 4 (assuming you don't miss) it will alternate between shields and O2 keeping them constantly suppressed.

Plus, you just snagged your endgame ion gun (depending on strategy).

[hghwolf]

If I need an ion weapon, can`t find an ion bomb and have two spare energy in my weapons profile... I`d probably still use hacking instead.

It`s not useless at any point, and definetly good early on, but there`s better stuff to spend three - it was three wasn`t it ? - weapon system levels on. Like Flak2. Or Breach Missiles. Or a Ion Blast 2. Or a BL2 and a Dual Laser. Or a beam. Or...

[SuigenGaming]

I just did a run where I got two random events that gave me chain Ions, as I was doing the enji B ship I upgraded to it from my original, I ended up also with a hull laser and defense drone 2. I ramped my engine as best i could still only 2 shields is what i think killed me and i had one cloak made it to the boss. but I will say that using the 2 chain Ions together they worked rather well because you would take out shields but then also null another system too alon with laser. before the hull laser i had a fire laser and the other starting laser gun for that ship with 1 chain Ion. but I dont think I would have made it to the end boss if I had not changed to the two chain Ions... now other ships not sure its too helpful.

[DarkTwinge]

One of the worst weapons in the game. I've yet to be able to justify its use in any serious run. Requires 3 power and is ridiculously slow to get rolling - even the awful Heavy Ion is more useful, because it combos better with other ion weaponry.

Notably, the Charge Ion is actually very good and a far superior weapon.

[Skinny Pete]

Originally posted by Twitchblade:

Anyone have any good experience with it yet? It seems useful, being able to put out an Ion Bomb's worth of damage out quicker and without using a missile, but I can't bring myself to spend the scrap on it when I run across it in a shop.

It's wretched trash, for reasons already noted. I would never, ever, ever buy it, and would usually sell it. The only time I've used it in a winning run was, oddly enough, combined with the Heavy Ion, and those two weapons actually did the job there.

But this was a very unusual situation. I literally had no opportunity to acquire or buy other weapons, had four weapons slots, had offensive drones, and the ship was massively tanked up with max shields, cloaking, and Zoltan shields, so I generally had the opportunity to wait for this junk to power up fully.

The other weapons were something like Hull Laser I and Mini Beam. Just a pile of junk. That it worked is more a testament to the fact that damn near anything will actually do the job, eventually.

Anyway for three power, the Ion II is a much better weapon. So is pretty much anything else.

[Sohei]

Chain Ion is junk. Charge Ion is okay. Heavy Ion is meh. Ion 2 is great.