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[Unfolder]

Hi this is some thoughts from the CR blog post I had and I'll put them here cause they seem "suggestiony." I don't have a very strong opinion on this, because like I say I don't use EMP at all right now and the game is perfectly fun without them but I feel it is kind of sad how weak they are compared to MOAR GUN

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EMP is underpowered, and it's effects, while good, need to be increased. Now that CR damage has been fleshed out maybe this would be a good avenue to increase the effects.

Maybe it's just the way I play but I have never been in a situation where I have said, "darn, I wish I had EMP right now." If you load up a Medusa with a few EMP small guns you always find yourself thinking "darn, why aren't those small energy burst PD?"

Another problem with EMP is once you get that combat upgrade that does double damage to enemy weapons and engines then EMP specific weapons become pretty much totally useless, since all of your guns become quasi-emp at that point. There's no reason to have emp guns, because it makes more sense to load up your ship with shield cracking weapons, and once the shields are down your weapons start behaving a lot like EMP would, but with lots more damage, so there's no reason to have PURE emp weapons. This is very, very apparent at the high levels. Hitting an enemy battleship with a full blast of dual plasma cannons, with the double weapon damage upgrade, will pretty much mangle 1/3 to 1/2 of an enemy's guns instantly, and unlike the tachyon lances you can continuously batter the now defanged ship for severe damage, doing more weapon damage until mega gibb.   

So I think, to make EMP more appealing, the damage potential from the malfunctions should increase. Assuming you pump enough EMP into a ship, particularly, small low CR ships you would start seeing lots of really dangerous malfunctions, much more than you would with simply pounding the ship with standard weapons. Or maybe EMP could be turned into another penalty like flux, one that can't be vented and only disapates based on time (and hullmods) and the EMP has "poor CR" like status effects (extra flux damage to your shields, lower manuverability, malfunctions etc etc) that gets worse and worse as more EMP is pumped in. Basically it should be possible to kill or at least badly maul a ship with lots of EMP alone, to make it "seizure to death." I guess this is technically possible now but practically speaking it is extremely difficult. You end up needing to load up at least half your ship with shield crackers and once the shields are cracked, even if the other half of ship is totally EMP, you're not really going to do that much damage, at least nothing compared to, say, if you had loaded up the ship with total conventional weapons. So why bother with EMP then?

I dunno, I'm just brainstorming. My somewhat wandering point is when choosing between EMP and MOAR GUN I always choose MOAR GUN and have never regretted it so perhaps the new CR effects can provide an avenue to rectify this. I really WANT to use EMP (so cool) but right now it's just too underpowered to be justified tactically.

[Magician]

 Thats definitely problem of your personal experience with game(not in a bad way!). And partly problem of game being pretty much EASY MODE from start to end, until we get more content.
 With mods it is possible to some extent enhance difficulty of combat. And thats when you will find that sometimes EMP is almost only way to go. EMP is ridiculously strong efficiency wise. While it is true that you can disable systems with normal weapons:
- sometimes it is not enough and EMP weapons work better, especially because EMP weapons deal EMP dmg, and normal weapons need to actually deal very serious dmg to disable every system - which means if you are stomping enemy, you don't need to disable enemy systems, but what if not? In case you are not stomping enemy and in case enemy has pretty serious weapons you want to disable it quickly.
- you can't expect your every ship to have plasma cannons with skills and stuff. And thats the difference. Destroyer with 1 plasma cannon in a battle against serious opponents will only die trying to deal any dmg at all. While EMP geared destroyer will disable much bigger threat in a matter of seconds, bringing much more to the table.
- emp weapons disable a lot of things in one burst. normal weapons will rather destroy enemy hull in one go than disable all systems.

It's just that you didn't encounter situations when you are forced outside of comfort zone, easy mode. Its not like EMP weapons are weak at all, but why bother with difficult tactics if you can steamroll with pure force? But it doesn't mean that you will be able to steamroll always.
I personally on the contrary considered EMP weapons to be overpowered, because sacrificing just 1-2 weapons mounts gives superior control over enemy. And yes, I fought some battles where one of the main points allowing me to win was usage of EMP weapons. While adding more guns didn't help at all and I kept losing.

[Megas]

Another thing:  A player with max damage control and Resistant Flux Conduit hullmod shrugs off EMP like nothing.  Weapons that get disabled recover very quickly.  Augmented Engines may get shut down for a while, but there is also that skill that mitigates engine damage enough that EMP alone cannot disable them.

[Unfolder]

Another thing:  A player with max damage control and Resistant Flux Conduit hullmod shrugs off EMP like nothing.  Weapons that get disabled recover very quickly.  Augmented Engines may get shut down for a while, but there is also that skill that mitigates engine damage enough that EMP alone cannot disable them.

Yeah that's another thing. Maybe instead of buffing EMP perhaps a debuff for all these inherent anti-emp bonuses and quasi-emp bonuses. The double damage to enemy weapons and engine in particular to me is ridiculously powerful, maybe not powerful enough to break the game but definitely enough to make the decision "should i spend OP on conventional or EMP weapons" tip strongly in favor of conventional weapons, which, to me, ARE emp weapons once the double damage bonus is in effect. I mean really, with that bonus if you park a medusa in front of something and start mauling it with large pulse lasers it's only a second or two before all those little red text starts appearing above the enemy, as opposed to half a second for emp, with one one third the damage and no ability to crack shields once they come up again. you see the issue? It's not that EMP suck, they don't, but compared to amped up conventional they are just not a good use of OP.     

[Megas]

The double damage to enemy weapons and engine in particular to me is ridiculously powerful, maybe not powerful enough to break the game but definitely enough to make the decision "should i spend OP on conventional or EMP weapons" tip strongly in favor of conventional weapons, which, to me, ARE emp weapons once the double damage bonus is in effect.

It is nice, but it requires five skill points.  Unfortunately for me, it is one of those perks I pass on because I spent my points on skills and perks I deem more important.

[Gothars]

I tend to agree with the assessment that conventional weapons are too good at knocking out subsystems. I wouldn't say the associated perks are a problem, but the base damage to weapons and engines is already too high. For example, one Hellbore hit on a still fully armored Paragon takes out several small and medium weapons (no skill involved).

[FlashFrozen]

More Shameless plugs!

http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=4536.0

I personally find that high alpha explosive weapons are basically EMP substitutes.

Though at least kinetic doesn't disable much but that's probably because.. they're kinetic.

It'll be hard to model, but I'd rather have the weapon mount hp buffer be equal for all damage types instead of based on hull damage, but making  more resistant to normal damage vs emp.

[rex]

I wouldn't mind emp doing extra shield damage, hit ship systems, effect hul mods, or possibly disable shield generators.


TAC lances can be pretty frigging nasty though. But I but they are a punishment for doing something dumb more than a real threat to anything bigger than a frigate.

[goduranus]

Look past the title of the thread, there's a solid suggestion in the text:

Assuming you pump enough EMP into a ship, particularly, small low CR ships you would start seeing lots of really dangerous malfunctions, much more than you would with simply pounding the ship with standard weapons. Or maybe EMP could be turned into another penalty like flux, one that can't be vented and only disapates based on time (and hullmods) and the EMP has "poor CR" like status effects (extra flux damage to your shields, lower manuverability, malfunctions etc etc) that gets worse and worse as more EMP is pumped in. Basically it should be possible to kill or at least badly maul a ship with lots of EMP alone, to make it "seizure to death."

What he's saying is basically let ships have an "EMP Meter" that works like a reverse CR meter, so when the ship takes EMP hits, it functions like a temporary decrease of CR, with all the CR's associated affects.

[Unfolder]

TAC lances can be pretty frigging nasty though. But I but they are a punishment for doing something dumb more than a real threat to anything bigger than a frigate.

Yeah that is exactly the way I feel about ALL EMP. It's just not a threat with the right inherent bonuses past a certain level. It's like, oh darn, someone spilled coffee on the keyboard, raise shields for three seconds while we reboot. Okay we're good. I guess if we were really to bore down to the issue it's that EMP is NO threat to shields. So if your flux tank gets hit by that crazy lightning frigate or a TAC lance you just turtle up and sure enough because that frigate or paragon wasted its ordanance slots on EMP it doesn't have enough firepower to bust your shields in the 2-3 seconds it takes to boot up again. Now you can say, maybe your shields are already busted and 2-3 seconds is a long time, and yeah, you're totally right, but my counter-question is if the enemy is already that vulnerable why wouldn't you want to simply crush the enemy with conventional weapons which btw with the right inherent bonus BEHAVE A LOT LIKE EMP ANYWAY

The EMP system is great, really, it breaks my heart not to use it, but it's just that punching enemy with boosted conventionals is so much more flexible and effective (at, you know, killing them, instead of just EMP tickling them)

What he's saying is basically let ships have an "EMP Meter" that works like a reverse CR meter, so when the ship takes EMP hits, it functions like a temporary decrease of CR, with all the CR's associated affects.

Yeah I figure why not? all the systems are already in place (Vent Timer/CR/EMP/Malfunction) so it would just take some reverse engineering to create another inter-related system.  

[Histidine]

What he's saying is basically let ships have an "EMP Meter" that works like a reverse CR meter, so when the ship takes EMP hits, it functions like a temporary decrease of CR, with all the CR's associated affects.

Support this. Not because EMP is particularly UP or anything (try fighting Thunders when you can't get enough shield coverage), but because it makes EMP more interesting.