How do beam weapons work?

[adnewsom]

Sometimes they seem to do lots of damage and other time do absolutely nothing. playing with the Zoltan ship with 2 beam weapons, and a missle launcher, ran outta missles and a single automated ship beat me because my (halbert?) beam weapons couldn't do any damage to it.

[Flyboy]

Most lasers have 0 shield penetration. In other words, you need to bring down the shields by other means in order to use the laser effectively. The Halbert beam has 1 shield penetration, so in other words, if the ship had 2 shields or more, you can't hurt it.

[Skinny Pete]

You need to take down the shields somehow. If you have a weapon that can hit shields, first fire that weapon, then when the shields are down immediately pause the game and aim your beam. If you have a beam that can penetrate shields (like Glaive and Halberd), try to hit the shields room first. If you take down another layer of shields, you will cause more damage on the rooms later in the path.

[Optimus Princeps]

Try to get an ion weapon and target their shields then reign chaos upon them with the beam weapons. I died the same way tho I had run out of missles and had nothing to penetrate shields :/ Ion weapons are my best guess at helping.

[Uzi Master]

The damage a beam does is reduced by 1 for each active shield bubble. Most beams are stopped by one level of shield, halbert beams deal 2 damage and thus can deal damage through a single shield, it'll be only half of what it'd normally do though. Glaive beam does three damage and thus can do damage through as many as 2 shield levels though again, best to bring them all down if you can. Every other beam is stopped dead by shields.

Just don't bother fireing beam weapons untill you have a good opertunity to deal damage, otherwise you're just wasting your time. Of course, With the halberd and glaive you'll often want to take the reduced damage if it means damaging the enemies shield system.

Beams will also deal damage to Zoltan shields, exluding the fire and anti-bio beams.

[anarcher]

Doesn't fire beam actually do damage to zoltan shields?

[Omnituens]

Ion weapon + Glaive is just... painful. The glaive beam can do 12-15 damage to certain layouts.

[Ray Robertson]

Автор сообщения: anarcher

Doesn't fire beam actually do damage to zoltan shields?

Fire beams do damage super shields.

[Jersee]

Автор сообщения: Ray Robertson

Автор сообщения: anarcher

Doesn't fire beam actually do damage to zoltan shields?

Fire beams do damage super shields.

Anti bio beam aswell

[Ray Robertson]

Автор сообщения: JerC

Автор сообщения: Ray Robertson

Fire beams do damage super shields.

Anti bio beam aswell

Anti-bio beams don't damage super shields from what I recall, I have one at the moment so will test when I next encounter one.

[Ray Robertson]

Автор сообщения: JerC

Автор сообщения: Ray Robertson

Fire beams do damage super shields.

Anti bio beam aswell

Anti-Bio Beam does also damage super shields. That is correct, my bad.

So we can accurately state that all beams damage super shields. :)

[anarcher]

i wouldn't know, i've never tried hahah. always sell those things off if something better is available, and even when i got to use them i waited until i knocked out the shield with other weapons.

[adnewsom]

I found beams combined with flak is extremely effective

[Skinny Pete]

Автор сообщения: Omnituens

Ion weapon + Glaive is just... painful. The glaive beam can do 12-15 damage to certain layouts.

Especially Ion Blast II. The chaining damage means you can spend the Glaive's long charge time stripping shields. (You can also get the same impact with two Ion Blast Is for one less power but it takes one more weapons slot.)

My absolute favorite is getting a Pre-Igniter early on. Many/most ships are a one-shot kill.

[Employee 427]

Автор сообщения: anarcher

i wouldn't know, i've never tried hahah. always sell those things off if something better is available, and even when i got to use them i waited until i knocked out the shield with other weapons.

Sounds like a poor idea.

[slappy_d0]

I've always found beams just time consuming for me and them. Sure, the glaive, halb, and pike are valuable, but I'm no beam guy. The only keeper in my book is the mini (required). They do the job, but managing the timing adds hours to the run. Just personal preference... As much as I like to see a ship burning or bio beaming, I also usually sell them off.