Anyone have the Pro and cons of these two options against a Shield Base? I have a hard time finding a definitive statement on this matter as most posts are concerned with drones as the target. Is it pure DPS, or do the weapons have unlisted modifiers vs. Shields or Bases?
There are modifiers. Look in the config files to see the current modifier values. For some reason we have to dig through config files to learn something that really should be displayed in game, if you ask me.....
Neither is really ideal against shielded targets. CVs are mostly useful for POI raiding because they can fit all the functions you need in one ship. Against unshielded targets, you can peak in and gun down turrets as you please. The CV can look after itself while you head inside. Chances are she'll be able to carry any loot you find as well. 15mm turrets do 485 base damage with a ROF of 0.2 and a base range of 485. Their damage multiplier against shields is 0.05. 30mm turrets do 550 base damage with a ROF of 0.35 and a base range of 530. Their damage multiplier is also 0.05 against shields. Both kinds of turrets suck against shields. They will take them down, sure. It'll even be cheap for you, since projectile ammo is made from rocks and sticks. But neither flavor is going to accomplish the job quickly. Current meta is to undermine with a drilling HV, rush in under the turrets and take down the shield from the inside with small arms (the DisturbedZ method), or use sustained fire from a nimble melee H/SV protected either by sustained dodging (not recommended) or finding a blind spot. Multiplayer also gives you options, like sustained artillery fire from multiple guns. If you're simply bothered by base attacks, you could always trying moving to a playfield without a drone base. It's a big galaxy.
All player weapons suck against shields, just energy weapons marginally less so. The AI now however has weapons with relatively massive shield damage multipliers. Feeling it is about time we got ion cannons as well.
Side note: All unmanned turrets have a RoF cap of 0.5 (120 RPM), so both the minigun and cannon turrets deal less damage than they say, unless you're manually controlling them. Against shields, they deal the least of any turret.
So pure DPS Against Shields, if just this side of worthless. Got it. No modifiers against base blocks for each weapon then?
Cannon turrets deal more damage against blocks, while miniguns deal more damage against entities. These damage modifiers are not applied to shields though.
Ah, so Cannons may well be better against bases after the shield go down. Which is how I thought it should work. It's pity that sapper attacks are so much easier and effective however. In fact, with difficulty set to hard- it may be the only practical way.
With Ion cannons etc - not worth using a CV with its poxy 12 potential cannons vs a ground base. The range is so short that you cant really evade like you may be able to in space. All a bit useless really.
Funny - now why didn't I think of that ? duh! 0.2 of 5000 blast damage probably makes it our most effective single device against shields, however I guess it still majorly sucks compared to some NPC weapons. The quickest vanilla game way through an on-ground shield is I believe an HV with max weapons compliment brought to bear on the shield. You can help it along with some det packs placed elsewhere so you don't get killed by your own guns.
I really dislike being forced into the sapper attack (undermine and explosives). It's basically turning what should be a combat encounter into a crafting one (and not a even a crafting design one at that which would be more acceptable). But that's what the game seems to require. I guess I could alter the configuration files. But that feels like cheating. We're going to try a mass assault with a couple of maxed out HVs, a dropped SV brick to draw fire, and a CV (also to draw fire and add what little fire weight it can as well). If that fails, it's sapper time and we'll be both bored and disappointed.
I run a modded game (CV weapons work everywhere, all HV turrets and all SV weapons work on both SV and HV and a bunch of other non combat stuff). I havent changed any weapons damage. TBH non of it really helps in this case because I havent changed any weapon type limits and play with limits and CPU on and a CV with all weapons active still has to down the shield faster than its own shield gets reduced otherwise it may take a lot of damage - in practice the drone base wins the shield race. So in the end, drone base assaults are still the same as I would do in a vanilla game - mods dont come it at all as a necessity because they just dont make enough of a difference. Sure, they make a small difference, but not the big I-win type change that some people may be looking for. The most appropriate mod might be a player version of the ion cannon as part of the energy weapon turrets block (forcing a choice of laser/plasma or ion in those turret slots), but then those weapons arnt supposed to be usable on a planet
This is a testament to bad configging. You can see that the Explosive Charge was meant to deal 1000 shield damage, from the #'d out shield damage line and the note left that it didn't work. As a workaround, they made it so the blast damage of the device is set for 1000 blast damage. There's a reason every single explosive weapon in the game deals 0 blast damage to shields. It does not calculate correctly. Instead of hitting 1000 damage, it's hitting for 5000-9000 damage per explosive since it's hitting multiple blocks, multiple times.
I did briefly wonder why the damage was commented out and it was done that way. I guess I shouldn't be surprised. I wish they would just open source this (and keep the rights to themselves of course) so those of us with a mind to could fix things. Now might be a good time while this damn virus is still about as there wont be any other time when good programmers might have some time on their hands.
That should be changed as well in terms of how it is presented. Have the damage and ROF as specified (and make sure the specification meets the cap if we have to have yet another lame cap). But when a player controls, state %bonus to ROF, damage or whatever (cos player is a mage or and exerts magical power on the mechanism and ammo or whatever bizarre excuse makes sense).
Just as an aside, in my opinion, the "Drone Base" POIs are like the boss battles of each planet they are on. They are intended to be somewhat intense and take planning. Once you get a shielded CV virtually all of the other unshielded POIs in the game become easy pickings, except the Drone Base. From what I can tell from my experience, the Drone Base is supposed to take more effort, more tactics, and more time than just "Pull up CV, Base Go Boom, I get lootz" as POI tends to become later in the game. I also think yall may be over thinking this thing. I have only found 1 drone base so far that I couldnt either get in close and get cover from terrain or get in close and get under its guns. For that base I did dig a sapping trench to within 100 meters and took the shield down with a plasma rifle. Also, if you take in a combat heavy tank, they can keep fighting even after their shields are down, so go in, and face tank the bugger for a bit. Once the shields are down any damage the base takes is permanent. So even if your tank gets shot nearly to pieces, as long as you take out 1 or 2 turrets while its down the next time you go in will be that much easier. There is also a pretty funny tactic I have seen, but not tried, where you use a front armored SV and just dive that sucker into the base and proceed to take out it out from the inside.
There are quite a few games that would benefit from open sourcing like that. Empyrion especially, agreed.
Why should a single man portable weapon be more effective than a wall of turrets on a capital vessel? Makes no sense.
