Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[colonelsanders]

Does anyone actually use Unstable Injector on a regular basis? The reduction in weapon range just seems too crippling for the top speed increase, especially considering how important outranging the enemy is.

[LinWasTaken]

I actually use it quite a bit on some modded cruisers that just need that extra kick of speed.

[Nameless]

I use it frequently.

[Daynen]

It goes on every logistics ship in my fleet.  I don't arm them so they lose nothing for that increased chance of getting away safely in the rare event that I'm forced to disengage them.

[Thaago]

I use it on every early game ship because for fighting pirates not getting swarmed/flanked lets the player fleet keep kiting them until they win. (I take it off any destroyers I might have had going into the mid game when enemy swarms are less troublesome than enemy cruisers and capitals). I use it on ships that don't need range to do their damage - Gryphons, some close range frigates. I'm considering using it on officered carriers for the same reason, but I haven't tried it yet: something like a Heron would be annoyingly fast with it, and +75% replacement from skills goes a long way towards cancelling the -25% from the hullmod.

[Megas]

Starter Apogee with Mining Blaster has it, and it is useful for it while it is stuck with starter equipment.

I may use Unstable Injector on assassin-style phase frigates too.

[Thaago]

Yup, just did some tests with carriers in a carrier centric (and piloted) playthrough: its a go to hullmod for them with skills, at least in the early-mid game where the total number of player decks is moderate. The penalty from UI is noticeable, but much less than the bonuses to replacement rate that carriers get so its still very worth it (and expanded deck crew is still a complete trap). Interceptor carriers with it can maintain constant severe losses without losing fighter rate and even heavy bomber carriers do just fine.

[ILuvLegion]

(and expanded deck crew is still a complete trap)

This is probably an off topic question, but I was wondering if you could elaborate more on Expanded Deck crews being a trap. I love carriers and always just assumed that I needed that hullmod. Is that not true?

[Vanshilar]

Unstable Injector can be useful for additional speed if your ship is taking Safety Overrides, because the SO range penalty is applied after the UI range penalty. So the range penalty from taking UI versus not taking it becomes very small.

Example, if you're using Cryoblaster Heavy Blaster, range of 600. If it's on a ship that gets SO, the range above 450 gets cut to 1/4 of the original value. So with SO, the new range is 450 + 150/4 = 487.5. If you now add UI, then the pre-SO range becomes 510, so the SO range becomes 450 + 60/4 = 465. So its range gets reduced from 487.5 to 465 if you take UI, or less than 5% range reduction, so then the additional speed may become more valuable.

This is only useful to certain ship builds and fleet setups where the extra speed is valuable, such as if other ships are using SO and you need the slower ship(s) to not fall too far behind. But UI can be useful in certain situations like this.

[Amoebka]

There are diminishing returns on usefullness on extra speed, and SO already gives plenty. Since SO is expensive and can't be built-in, SO ships tend to be short on OP and would rather max vents.

[TaLaR]

On frigates - almost always, on DEs - rarely (something like player piloted Medusa), on cruisers and above - pretty much never.

[Network Pesci]

I pretty much exclusively use Unstable Injector on pursuit frigates.  I generally keep my starter Wolf for the entire campaign, but once I've got enough other craft in my fleet that the Wolf isn't my best choice for combat, I rebuild it strictly for pursuit.  Of course, nowadays "Let your second in command handle it" gets pretty good results so I hardly ever manually play pursuits, but once in a while there's a particular ship that I REALLY want to make sure does not escape, then I will manually play out the pursuit.

[Excretusmaximus]

(and expanded deck crew is still a complete trap)

This is probably an off topic question, but I was wondering if you could elaborate more on Expanded Deck crews being a trap. I love carriers and always just assumed that I needed that hullmod. Is that not true?

I was about to ask the same thing.

[Grievous69]

My guess is that EDC costs a lot for a minor increase you'll barely notice, better to invest in other areas. I personally haven't used the hullmod a single time after the nerf, just by looking at numbers it seems super meh.

[Thaago]

(and expanded deck crew is still a complete trap)

This is probably an off topic question, but I was wondering if you could elaborate more on Expanded Deck crews being a trap. I love carriers and always just assumed that I needed that hullmod. Is that not true?

I was about to ask the same thing.

Sorry I missed these, I've been away!

My guess is that EDC costs a lot for a minor increase you'll barely notice, better to invest in other areas. I personally haven't used the hullmod a single time after the nerf, just by looking at numbers it seems super meh.

Yeah exactly this: The actual amount of the bonus is small and dwarfed by skills - for ships with a moderate amount of carriers, the bonuses from skills with officers are so large that they actually have no need to better their replacement rate! The OP can be better spent on either higher end fighters, or more/bettter missiles, or better shields, or a few defense guns to shoot off fighters/frigates... you get the idea.