Print

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

[Aptmoniker]

Hello,
Baffled by this and not finding a clear answer in the archives...
At times when my Apogee flagship charges into the thick of fire it will somehow stall, as if in a flame-out; despite the shields being maintained and flux not overloading.  Last game this occurred in the ship was beset with a lot of fire from different ships at once, including fighter, but the shields were still holding when it lost control and flux was at a safe level.  I seem to recall this has happened before, on different play throughs, during the start of combat even before taking fire when the ship suddenly drifts.  My CR was also high, no where near the point of malfunctioning.

Chat GPT says this could be caused by an enemy using a "system disruption" weapon, if that's the case what are the preventive measures?

[Princess_of_Evil]

Shields only cover a set size (in degrees) of the ship, not the entire ship, barring some rare exceptions. And the engines are just always on the unprotected side of the shield.

[Alex]

Hello,
Baffled by this and not finding a clear answer in the archives...
At times when my Apogee flagship charges into the thick of fire it will somehow stall, as if in a flame-out; despite the shields being maintained and flux not overloading.  Last game this occurred in the ship was beset with a lot of fire from different ships at once, including fighter, but the shields were still holding when it lost control and flux was at a safe level.  I seem to recall this has happened before, on different play throughs, during the start of combat even before taking fire when the ship suddenly drifts.  My CR was also high, no where near the point of malfunctioning.

Hi! Welcome to the forum

Are the engines actually still up at that point - that is, can you see the engine flames? There's something in the game called the "zero flux engine boost" - your ship gets plus 50 to top speed when its flux level is zero and it's not building any flux. So if you raise shields, the shields will generate a little flux, and your ship will lose this bonus. For a larger ship like the Apogee, that will reduce its speed *a lot*. Is that, perhaps, what you're seeing?

This doesn't match the "drifting" you're describing, but it's the only thing that comes to mind.

Some weapons - Ion Beams in particular - can "arc" through the shields when hard flux is high, and they can disable weapons/engines despite the shields being up. But that would not account for the "before taking fire" case.

Another question is, how sure you are that this isn't just relative motion? If a faster enemy ship starts backing off or tries to maintain a specific distance from you, it might feel like your ship is suddenly moving more slowly or not at all, unless you're used to how this works and/or are paying careful attention to the "dust" particles that show absolute movement.

Chat GPT says this could be caused by an enemy using a "system disruption" weapon, if that's the case what are the preventive measures?

(This is, in fact, not the case. ChatGPT is great at being confidently wrong!)

[Aptmoniker]

The Apogee has full 360 shields, it's not the result of flameout or ion weapons (I'm keen to use ions on enemy ships to cause flameouts).  I can also rule out a perspective illusion.  It's not a flux overload, as mentioned it's happened when flux is at a safe level and the shields are maintained during the drift. 

It might be a false memory but I think this has had this has happened even prior to enemy contact or at the very start of an engagement.  When it's happened before I wondered if I hit a wrong key on the keyboard or if it might be some kind of bug, as if the game briefly transferred control to the gamepad. 

It's rare but last night I lost an important battle when my flagship lost control leaving it to be overwhelmed and destroyed and causing me to lose an important battle.  Hence why I'm trying to figure it out now.

[Aptmoniker]

I believe the engines go out when this happens, as if it were a flameout.
Is there a weapon or mode of attack that can turn off engines through a full shield?

[Network Pesci]

(Deleted talk about the Apogee having a 360 degree shield and Ions going through shields)

One preventative measure is the hullmod Reinforced Flux Conduits.  This is already one of my favorite hullmods just for its primary effect which is to make your ship vent faster, but it also adds some EMP resistance to your ship systems so it takes more EMP damage to disable them.  I don't remember without booting up the game whether it's 25% or 50% resistance, but it's noticeable.

(Dang, beaten while I was typing.  Okay I'm going to respond to that too.)

That guy who posted just now, by the way, that is Alex, literally the main guy, the programmer of the game is taking the time to answer your question.  Best customer service in all of videogames.  That said, let me contradict the creator of the game on his own forum and defend the mathsoul abomination.

If you're sure it's not Ions going through your shields, the ChatGPT could be right.  There's a destroyer, I seem to think it's the Harbinger, it has a "system disruption" attack, I'm fairly sure it shuts off your engines and I know for a fact it works through shields.  There's a distinct visual effect if that happens, so you should be able to tell if it's that attack specifically once you know to look for it.

[Alex]

If you're sure it's not Ions going through your shields, the ChatGPT could be right.  There's a destroyer, I seem to think it's the Harbinger, it has a "system disruption" attack, I'm fairly sure it shuts off your engines and I know for a fact it works through shields.  There's a distinct visual effect if that happens, so you should be able to tell if it's that attack specifically once you know to look for it.

Correct except for the part about engines - it causes an overload for a second or two, which turns off shields and weapons, but NOT engines!

I believe the engines go out when this happens, as if it were a flameout.
Is there a weapon or mode of attack that can turn off engines through a full shield?

The Ion Beam and the Tachyon Lance could arc through shields if the ship's hard flux level is above zero (the higher the *hard* flux is, the better the chance). If those arcs hit the engines, they may do enough damage to flame them out.

[Network Pesci]

"Quantum Disruption", my bad.  And it does not actually cut off the engines, but when it knocks down your shields all those ships surrounding you are instantly doing damage to your systems and turning your engines off.  Every time I experience what you described in your first post in combat, it's because there's a Harbinger somewhere around.

If it happens at the beginning of the battle and you know it's not a CR-related malfunction, I've seen a behavior when the fleet is joining the battle and the ships are boosting in, if a ship's path would make it crash into a large asteroid, it will stop boosting.  If this happens to your flagship, you don't have control for the first few seconds until everybody else is finished with their boost and your ship is no longer moving forward but you won't be disabled and you'll still have control of your shields.  That's as close to what you're describing as I can think of.

[LightningCutey]

Could very well be Zero-Flux Speed boost as Alex has been saying, which adds +50 speed as long as you are at 0 flux, and not generating any(or just not generating any if you have Helmsmenship Elite), this causes a flare up on the engines and a noticeable increase in acceleration, as said, putting up your shields as said would cause it to stop, which would cause your movements to be more sluggish, and for you to slow down (in an apogee, this would be by about 50%), and all the other AI ships don't put up their shield unless they sense something is about to hit them, meaning you could see all the other ships go past you while you are forced to slow down.

Engines don't go out on their own, they require damage(being shot in them, or if an EMP arc hits them), or through malfunction(being at below 40% CR), no system in the game currently disables engines, apart from burn drive, plasma burn and micro burn(this one being on an un-obtainable ship), which the apogee doesn't have, and require making contact with an equal or larger ship with the system active.

[Linnis]

Playing with mods? Plenty of culprits possible.

[Aptmoniker]

I appreciate all the prompt input.
Given no one seems familiar with this event I'm thinking it may not be an intended feature of the game.   It may be incorrect to describe it as an engine issue and more accurate to say it's briefly losing control of the ship or control input itself.  I can't recall clearly whether the engine flames remain or go out, either seems possible.  I've been playing for a few months and early on looked into a gamepad mod but couldn't get it to work.  It could be I left this mod in and every once and a while the game is attempting a controller input. Will look into this and see if it reoccurs. 

Thank you!

[basileus]

Well if it's just not responding to input, then you might be onto something because, on my laptop, the game won't accept input from both my keyboard and touchpad simultaneously.  Using one interrupts input from the other.  So maybe it is tied to the gamepad driver.

[Aptmoniker]

Spoke too soon, apparently there are no mods installed.
There wouldn't be a hotkey around the WASD that might cause it? 
Next time it happens I'll try to record it.

[Alex]

Hmm. Could it be some combination of keys you're pressing that the keyboard is unable to register at the same time? For example, commonly, keyboards will now be able to register more than two out of any 4 keys in a square as being down. So if you have W, A, and S all down at the same time, only two of those - probably the first two you'd pressed - would register.

Could also be some kind of hardware issue, or some other software that's running interfering with the game somehow. I mean, it's still possible that it's something "normal" happening in-game but that's starting to seem more and more unlikely.

[Deshara]

hey OP do you know what the shift key does?