Discussion: Ion Weapons

[Yellow]

Ion Blast II is the best weapon in the game. It's totally overpowered. Get that and a beamweapon and nothing can stand against you (defensedrone against rockets is adviced because you may need some time ^^ and a bomb or rocket weapon against ships that try to flee).
You can get 4 lvls of shields down with it easy. if your gunner is lvl ** you can even miss one shot and the next will reaply the timer and deal one aditional ion dmg.
I beat the boss the first time with the engi ship and it was really easy.

[Incendax]

• You hit an enemy system and deal 1 Ion Damage, and one bar of energy is 'disabled' for 5 seconds.
• If you hit that system with 1 Ion Damage before 5 seconds has elapsed, then the next bar of energy is 'disabled' and the counter refreshes to 5 seconds.
• If you hit that system when all energy bars are 'disabled' then the counter merely refreshes to 5 seconds.

[Algarth]

Related: Was in a stand-still fight with a starting Torus vs something that couldn't get past my shields and I had nothing left that could hurt them.

Ion their O2 over and over. It was off 90% of the time. 20 minutes later, nothing happened. Unlike my O2, theirs doesn't deplete over time. No asphyxiation without fire or direct damage to the generator.

So you can't have uber defense and just choke them all to death.

[Innominate]

Ion their O2 over and over. It was off 90% of the time. 20 minutes later, nothing happened. Unlike my O2, theirs doesn't deplete over time. No asphyxiation without fire or direct damage to the generator.

So you can't have uber defense and just choke them all to death.

Actually, you can. You need close to 100% downtime for their O2 though. I got a second ion weapon (the 8 second 1 ion damage one) and was able to keep both an unlimited number of shields and their O2 down quite consistently. Their ship probably had more than 1 level of O2, and you only disabled the top level (thus bringing their O2 regen down from 6x to 3x, or 3x to 1x, rather than disabling it entirely).

The pattern I found that allowed me to do pretty well in this regard was to alternate the starting ion weapon (4 sec/1 ion I think?), twice on their shields for every shot on their O2. Keep the other ion weapon on their O2 constantly and you'll asphyxiate them eventually.

Of course if they have a medbay you won't be able to do that (though you can kill anyone who can't make it to the medbay, as the AI won't cycle crew out), and some ships have such high dodge that it becomes really difficult to keep both shields and O2 locked down. Hopefully by that point you'll have a method of boarding or doing other anti-personnel damage.

Incidentally, the Torus where I managed to get ion-asphyxiation kills was the one I just finished the game. That's my first victory, and on normal to boot.