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[Killer of Fate]

I'm making a dumb mod, and I was thinking I'd put Acuasal Disruptor along greater speed on a Champion, see what happens... But while at it, I remembered talking with someone about how the ability sucks.

And I mean, yeah... Sort of. It has a lot of potential. It can be paired with Ion Cannons to power down a ship or with a Phase Lance to snipe one. The issue though is that it has a very short range and an NPC pilot might have trouble landing the hits through good timing.

The proposition was like... To slow down a ship, make it like a debuff, rather than temporarily stun it. But personally I don't really think it's the ability's fault, it's mostly just the fact that Harbinger is such an awkward ship to pilot around.

In vanilla I would do a really stupid thing and just give it integrated targeting unit along a heavy blaster loadout or something. It wouldn't even use the ability unless it would occasionally FINALLY manage to approach someone. Otherwise it just hanged around in the back and stalked till the right moment, only to randomly run out of peak operating time or get trolled by a beam.

[Doctorhealsgood]

Acausal disruptor? Is this some sort of [REDACTED]

[SafariJohn]

It is the Harbinger's ship system.

[Phenir]

Phase ships are underpowered for AI. They often overextend, flux out, and die without doing anything. Doom is ok in AI hands because overpowered system and too slow to outrun your fleet. Half the time though, enemy ai deploys it late, so it has no support. It gets surrounded and dies. Shade and afflictor are also ok because they are basically a fast frigate that can go invincible and gtfo whenever they want plus antimatter blaster exists. But they are so fast, they often die on first contact or the enemy AI is too skittish to bring them out of the battle line where they can shine. We don't talk about gremlin.
Harbinger is, like most destroyers, too slow to get in, kill something, and get out; doesn't have the potential system range of doom to support the fleet; and the opening the system creates is so tiny the ai has trouble abusing it, not to mention the damage debuff from the system. If it overloaded for maybe a second longer so the AI has time to realize the enemy is overloaded and they should shoot it, it'd probably be ok. OR if it had more range and the AI could coordinate or realize an enemy has a bunch of damage aimed at it. There's also the problem of where to assign the harbinger, again like most destroyers. If the harbinger is safe in a battle line, it is too far to use its system and weapons without being in serious threat. So then what about hunting stragglers? I would prefer an afflictor or shade. Both much faster than the harbinger so they can catch even the fastest enemy running around and 2 afflictors > 1 harbinger. And both those ships work better in the battle line either swatting fighters or debuffing enemy.
If you can't tell, I just really dislike direct combat destroyers. When you need either range or speed to be effective in combat, the destroyer, which has neither, just sucks.

[eert5rty7u8i9i7u6yrewqdef]

Phase ships are underpowered for AI. They often overextend, flux out, and die without doing anything. Doom is ok in AI hands because overpowered system and too slow to outrun your fleet. Half the time though, enemy ai deploys it late, so it has no support. It gets surrounded and dies. Shade and afflictor are also ok because they are basically a fast frigate that can go invincible and gtfo whenever they want plus antimatter blaster exists. But they are so fast, they often die on first contact or the enemy AI is too skittish to bring them out of the battle line where they can shine. We don't talk about gremlin.
Harbinger is, like most destroyers, too slow to get in, kill something, and get out; doesn't have the potential system range of doom to support the fleet; and the opening the system creates is so tiny the ai has trouble abusing it, not to mention the damage debuff from the system. If it overloaded for maybe a second longer so the AI has time to realize the enemy is overloaded and they should shoot it, it'd probably be ok. OR if it had more range and the AI could coordinate or realize an enemy has a bunch of damage aimed at it. There's also the problem of where to assign the harbinger, again like most destroyers. If the harbinger is safe in a battle line, it is too far to use its system and weapons without being in serious threat. So then what about hunting stragglers? I would prefer an afflictor or shade. Both much faster than the harbinger so they can catch even the fastest enemy running around and 2 afflictors > 1 harbinger. And both those ships work better in the battle line either swatting fighters or debuffing enemy.
If you can't tell, I just really dislike direct combat destroyers. When you need either range or speed to be effective in combat, the destroyer, which has neither, just sucks.

The exception is SO Medusa, and or System Expertise Medusa.

[Killer of Fate]

Phase ships are underpowered for AI. They often overextend, flux out, and die without doing anything. Doom is ok in AI hands because overpowered system and too slow to outrun your fleet. Half the time though, enemy ai deploys it late, so it has no support. It gets surrounded and dies. Shade and afflictor are also ok because they are basically a fast frigate that can go invincible and gtfo whenever they want plus antimatter blaster exists. But they are so fast, they often die on first contact or the enemy AI is too skittish to bring them out of the battle line where they can shine. We don't talk about gremlin.
Harbinger is, like most destroyers, too slow to get in, kill something, and get out; doesn't have the potential system range of doom to support the fleet; and the opening the system creates is so tiny the ai has trouble abusing it, not to mention the damage debuff from the system. If it overloaded for maybe a second longer so the AI has time to realize the enemy is overloaded and they should shoot it, it'd probably be ok. OR if it had more range and the AI could coordinate or realize an enemy has a bunch of damage aimed at it. There's also the problem of where to assign the harbinger, again like most destroyers. If the harbinger is safe in a battle line, it is too far to use its system and weapons without being in serious threat. So then what about hunting stragglers? I would prefer an afflictor or shade. Both much faster than the harbinger so they can catch even the fastest enemy running around and 2 afflictors > 1 harbinger. And both those ships work better in the battle line either swatting fighters or debuffing enemy.
If you can't tell, I just really dislike direct combat destroyers. When you need either range or speed to be effective in combat, the destroyer, which has neither, just sucks.

So, I assume u re a big fan of Beam Shrikes and Long Range Hammerhead...
And the Sunder maybe?

[Killer of Fate]

Acausal disruptor? Is this some sort of [REDACTED]

What, are we some sort of [REDACTED] squad?

[Doctorhealsgood]

We don't talk about gremlin.

SO gremlins are funny

[Phenir]

So, I assume u re a big fan of Beam Shrikes and Long Range Hammerhead...
And the Sunder maybe?

No, not really. Shrikes are made of paper and their system just gets them killed. Same with sunder with that 1.2 shield and its also stuck with energy weapons so it has to use beams if it wants range. Hammerhead is ok I guess but I could field a falcon which is more mobile and has access to support weapons like graviton and emp beam and more range, or an eradicator (in lieu of two hammerheads) lose one medium ballistic but gain again range, survivability, and the ability to focus that damage on one target without player intervention.
I'm talking in the hands of the AI though. In the player's hands, destroyers can work just like pretty much any other ship. Player beam sunder can hang back and look for openings. Player shrike won't needlessly use its system and overextend. Etc.

The exception is SO Medusa, and or System Expertise Medusa.

Yeah, medusa is good. Mobility system that works in all directions unlike shrike, strong shield, good mounts.

[Thaago]

While Shrikes aren't tough they do have good shields: .7 efficiency with 5400 base capacity (so up to 9400 if the player can sink 20 OP into caps, which to be fair they probably can't). I find improving the shield arc to be worthwhile to help protect against chip damage, as they do have very weak armor. They're more 'big frigates' than destroyers with burn 10 and 8 DP, though they count as destroyers for other stuff.

[VladimirVV]

I'm making a dumb mod, and I was thinking I'd put Acuasal Disruptor along greater speed on a Champion, see what happens... But while at it, I remembered talking with someone about how the ability sucks.

And I mean, yeah... Sort of. It has a lot of potential. It can be paired with Ion Cannons to power down a ship or with a Phase Lance to snipe one. The issue though is that it has a very short range and an NPC pilot might have trouble landing the hits through good timing.

The proposition was like... To slow down a ship, make it like a debuff, rather than temporarily stun it. But personally I don't really think it's the ability's fault, it's mostly just the fact that Harbinger is such an awkward ship to pilot around.

In vanilla I would do a really stupid thing and just give it integrated targeting unit along a heavy blaster loadout or something. It wouldn't even use the ability unless it would occasionally FINALLY manage to approach someone. Otherwise it just hanged around in the back and stalked till the right moment, only to randomly run out of peak operating time or get trolled by a beam.

I had the same problem as you do. I found out that the timing problem is actually caused by the acausal disruptor outranging the max weapon range. (If you check the acausal disruptor effect file in the starsector core, you will find out that the range for acausal disruptor to work is like 300 units larger than the ship's max weapon range) This outranging problem causes the ship to use the system, but then unable to follow fires onto the target. I was so annoyed by this problem that I just decided to write my own java script for a shipsystem like acausal disruptor, and I set the usage range to be the same as the minimum weapon ranges. And I just gave this alternated version disruptor to my mod ships.

Then it works fine, the ship will get close in, until all weapons can hit target, then use the disruptor, and throw everything it's got at the target. It turns out to be just fine. I remembered Alex being so generous that he decided to open source the starsector codes for us modders to make reference to, thank you Alex! So what you might want to do is take a look at the acausal disruptor stats file in the src zip file in the starsector core folder, then create your own alternation to avoid such timing problem.

[Phenir]

Qauntum Disruptor. The system is called Quantum Disruptor.

[Aeson]

Qauntum Disruptor. The system is called Quantum Disruptor.

It is, and it isn't - Quantum Disruptor is the system's player-facing name, but Acausal Disruptor is its internal name if you're digging around in the game files.

[Killer of Fate]

Qauntum Disruptor. The system is called Quantum Disruptor.

It is, and it isn't - Quantum Disruptor is the system's player-facing name, but Acausal Disruptor is its internal name if you're digging around in the game files.

Oh, so that's what happened... I was confused why I know that name for a second there.

[Phenir]

Qauntum Disruptor. The system is called Quantum Disruptor.

It is, and it isn't - Quantum Disruptor is the system's player-facing name, but Acausal Disruptor is its internal name if you're digging around in the game files.

Right, but we don't call the salvage rig the construction rig, or the khopesh fighter the hoplon fighter, or the phase skimmer the displacer, or any other number of differences like that.