Aeolus Plasma Desolator

Stats
Required licenses/standing:
-/-/9/-/-
Admire standing
Requires Leviathan Hunter I

Damage: 1600
Delay: 0.4s
Energy: 70/blast
Speed: 205m/s
Grid Usage: 8
Mass: 1300kg
Volume (as cargo): 1 cu
Power Drain: 150

Comparison line to Annihilator:
D: -200 | E: +5/blast | PD: +150

Notes
Ask yourself, in the heat of battle, what is the ability to smash 150 energy off your opponent's powerbar worth?

This is a flanking power-drain annihilator side-grade intended to give you the choice between a damage/disable mechanic for large port gauss. The power drain comes at the cost of energy-per-blast and damage, but 150 energy drain per shot is enough of a hit to make it a tough choice.

I wouldn't suggest a power drain/damage hybrid side-grade for every weapon type, only for gauss, so if you think i'm working down the list of every weapon just to add drain, I'm not. It's suited to gauss because of its use as a flankers weapon and the low number of shots you put out with one power bar, putting it on blasters would be stupid, you wont see a blaster w/drain suggestion from me.

This weapon has the old 70 drain/shot which means you can only effectively put out 4 shots per power bar. It has a significant impact on both the DPS and the DPE, which make this weapon inferior to the devastator Mk II damage-wise.

I put the leviathan requirement on there because I think it adds well needed incentive to hunt levi's as a team, and Aeolus because.. Aeolus needs love. Valent would also be a good manufacturer for this weapon, however.

If and when conc gets successfully added to large port gauss, this weapon should be no exception.

600 power drain in 1.6 seconds? Actually, on a UC, that's 900 drain in 2.4 seconds, plus 150 more every 1.2 seconds thereafter.

/me smells a lot of burning Trident Type M's that can't warp (or even turbo) after a single greyhound with a UC gets on their 6. (Forget about deploying TU mines after the first hit)

I'm all for a way to immobilize player cappies, but it seems a little OP to have 1 large port both cripple and damage to that extent.

We already live in a verse where tridents already can't warp out after a single UC hound gets on its six. Hell, it can be a centurion mark I!

You know that the power cell blaster, a small port weapon weighing 100kg does:

312.5 DRS (drain per second)
5 DRE (drain per energy)

This weapon does:

375 DRS
2.1 DRE

The key difference is the drain per battery, the desolator will only put out 4 shots on a UC battery stretching 5 if you hold down the trigger, thats enough to drain a big battery alright.

Your PCB on the other hand is much more efficient and will end up draining a heavy cell a few times over on a single ultra battery and if you manage it correctly you can easily stop a trident from warping out with that.

Lets set tridents aside here, for all intents and purposes a trident should be immune to a pissy little 100kg blaster that drains power by virtue of shields, the vulnerability to power drain of a trident is due solely to that fact.

Lets instead discuss whether or not this weapon presents a good balance scenario in normal ship to ship combat. Nobody is going to get very far chasing a trident with a large port gauss. This is about a large port weapon that has unique advantages over its other relatives.

Over the long-run, this weapon has an energy-limited firing delay of 1.4 seconds. With a fast-charge cell, it only takes 1.25 seconds to hit the 25% mark and jump away, so it would be impossible to detain an FC-user indefinitely with this weapon. With an ultra-charge, it takes 1.5 seconds to jump, so it would be theoretically possible to hold a UC-user, but you'd only have a tenth of a second for error margin, so it would still be extremely impractical. Heavy-charge users need a whopping 3.06 seconds to charge, so they could be detained successfully.

For furballing, on the other hand, this could be lots of fun, especially against rail platforms.

Again with the damage + power drain!
-1 for the same reasons as this thread. http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/28261

You didn't give any reasons in that thread, just your opinion that damage should never be paired with power drain because its 'OP'.

While Rin's analysis is useful, it's important to remember that this weapon gets four to five shots maximum at the enemy before they're able to slip away depending on what kind of ship they're in. If you were to shoot an annihilator at them and hit in the same timeframe you're always going to do significantly more damage.

What it comes down to is that in a straight comparison power drain is far less useful than damage, it's how you use this weapon tactically in a team that makes it potentially useful, but also balanced.

Aeolus Plasma devastator? Kinda sounds like my dick

-1, too much thought put into a stupid idea.

Snk I think you mean to say, 'kinda sounds like my phaserlight'

:P

-1

why?

The velocity on the current power drain weapon is very low. Any power drain weapon with a higher velocity should have some other significant handicap.

Combined damage and power drain: The current power drain weapon is 5 drain per energy. Your proposed weapon is 2.1 drain per energy AND 23 damage per energy. Not that bad a combo, if the weapon was low velocity, low auto aim, low collision width, and low damage per second.

I can equip a PDB and a plasma HX, pump out around 2500+ damage per second, and still have power left over to drain 50 energy a second. consider this a standard of comparison for combined damage power drain weapons.

Your proposed weapon is completely unbalanced and over powered.

The PCB and Plasma HX are small port weapons, for starters.

You can pick and choose which stats should and shouldn't be relevant in a balance comparison all day long but unless you have a justification for why those stats are relevant to the power draining mechanic you might as well be singing 'mary had a little lamb'.

For instance, your PCB only weighs 100kg, your plasma hx and PCB combo together only weighs 400kg which means that you're doing 2750 DPS and 312 DRS for only 400kg of weight, compared to the plasma desolator which does 3400ish DPS and 375 DRS but weighs TRIPLE the weight! OMG - PCB and HX combo OP!!!!

It doesn't mean squat unless you can certifiably say that there should be an inverse correlation between weight and drain/second or damage/second.

In the same regard, you haven't said why low velocity, low auto aim, low collision width and low dps are important balancing factors to power drain, just that you believe they are.

Also i'd love to get Incarnate to weigh in here, so i'm going to transparently bait him to do so as follows:

I put to you that Incarnate didn't design the PCB with any particular balance considerations in mind. He knew that introducing a new mechanic can have profound impacts on the metagame, and that the community regularly scrutinizes and questions the usefulness of the weapons that we have (*cough* concussion railgun *cough*) so he purposefully and intentionally was quite conservative about the stats.

It would therefore be extremely foolish of you, me or anybody else to use the PCB as a basis for how weapons with the power drain mechanic should work. Instead, we should be asking ourselves what draining a power-cell is actually worth, which weapon styles it suits best and proceeding from there.

low velocity, low auto aim, low collision width and low dps are important balancing factors to power drain, because that is what currently exist, and balance is defined by what currently exist. It is sad that I have to explain to you the meaning of "balance". It is sad that you complain about someone not telling you "why", and then when someone does tell you why, you attempt to discredit their explanation of "why". So, in light of your behavior. I do not have a why. All I have is a -1

-1

So in summary, Roda Slane thinks power drain should only exist in the form it currently exists in, otherwise it's overpowered. You're different from ARF then.. how exactly?

The PCB stats are contrived and poorly so. It is not a useful weapon and over time the usage statistics will reflect that, if they haven't already. Power drain stands poised to remain yet another feature that is technically implemented yet functionally devoid.

It is my understanding that the PDB is billed as a weapon that can prevent an enemy from leaving a sector. If it lives up to that billing, then I feel it is useful. I am not sure that it will live up to that billing. I have not tested it. I do not think you can hit anything that can dodge, considering it's low velocity. I do not expect it to be very effective at indefinitely delaying the exit of any ship that can infiniturbo. The PDB may need to be fixed.

What does your weapon fix? What does your weapon provide, that I can not accomplish by equipping a gauss and a PDB. The only thing great about your weapon is that it has high velocity power drain. If that is all you want, then just propose a high velocity PDB.

@Roda, so you are saying that one the one hand, power drain weapons should be slow with bad auto-aim, and on the other, the PDB is useless for its purported function because it is slow with bad power drain?

I hope it makes more sense to you than to me...

The PCB stats are contrived and poorly so. It is not a useful weapon and over time the usage statistics will reflect that, if they haven't already. Power drain stands poised to remain yet another feature that is technically implemented yet functionally devoid.

TRS, this leads me to believe that you're in the same boat Roda is: I am not sure that it will live up to that billing. I have not tested it.

The difference is he's willing to admit that he's not really used the thing enough to know for sure.

I do not expect it to be very effective at indefinitely delaying the exit of any ship that can infiniturbo.

For the record: Yes, it can.

no it cant arf.... possible and very effective are two very different things.

also, an additional -1 to this horrible idea

"What does your weapon provide, that I can not accomplish by equipping a gauss and a PDB."

It uses a large port. Read: Uses it, doesn't waste it.

Also with regards to ARF nonsense; if a ship is close enough to use a blaster with 150m/s effectively, it's close enough to destroy the ship.

Excuse me while I print a log of my recent gameplay activities to demonstrate the bleeding obvious to the bleeding oblivious.

The PCB is not useful against fighters. It may be useful against moths, and is very probably useful against tridents.

This Aeolus Plasma Desolator, on the other hand, would be the opposite: useful against fighters, not useful against tridents.

I do not have any problem with a large port energy drain weapon. I have a problem with a 200+m/s energy drain weapon, with the best autoaim any weapon has to offer. The fact that it does damage on top of it all is beside the point.

if a ship is close enough to use a blaster with 150m/s effectively, it's close enough to destroy the ship

How very true. Except when it isn't. A capship can easily survive raw damage across multiple sectors. I do not know that a PDB changes this circumstance, but I sure hope it does, because nothing else does.

Some people may wish options to outright destroying a ship. Pirates may find they get paid more, when they force a moth to be stuck at a wh until they pay.